The Mind is an Old Crow

I wrote this first part earlier this week.

It is the beginning of the second week of staying home.  I fell on the ice in the forest four days ago and hurt my shoulder so I have been resting it and taking anti-inflammatories.  And staying off of the ice.  Yesterday, it rained cold rain with an equally cold wind.  I went for a short walk in town to the post office and back.  But this morning, it is bright and sunny although still cold.  I decided to walk down the street that is flanked by forest, to the lake as the road is clear of ice. 

The family of crows that live here are busy re-establishing their social order.  Their grown young from last year are being asked to give the mother and father crows some space to nest and start a new family.  The grown siblings will be allowed to help once the babies have fledged from the nest.  But right now, they are being sent away, noisily.  And the young crows are responding just as noisily.  The young crows do not like this change it seems.

There seem to be more cardinals this year.  They sit high in the treetops, bright red and calling out their mating whistles to set up housekeeping with a partner.  They seem to be welcoming a change in their situation.  It’s time to create new cardinals, according to the sun, according to the temperature, according to the buds on the trees.  They seem enthusiastic.

We pass people, at a respectful distance, who are walking dogs.  The dogs love the smells of spring and are delighted.  Of course most dogs are always delighted which makes them excellent role models for us.  I love their love for life.

We stop at the spring along the way where people sometimes take water straight from Earth.  It bubbles up happily and there are those that swear by its health-giving properties as opposed to town water.  So far, I haven’t tried any, but I appreciate its abundance of life and stop to be grateful.

As I walk, I remember that I am grateful for the sunshine after a few days of clouds.  I am grateful not to be in pain as my shoulder is healing.  I am grateful to be walking on the road, not on ice.  I am grateful for the oxygen I breathe into my lungs thanks to the trees and all the plants that create it from the carbon dioxide I breathe out.  I am grateful for the porridge and maple sweetwater I had for breakfast.  I am grateful to all the trees that tower above me. 

We reach the lake and notice that it is still frozen over at this point.  Farther along, the channel if open and full of migratory ducks but the pathway is full of snow and ice still, so I stay away.  We look out across the lake, bright and shining in the sun and feel the March sun warm our backs.

We decide to walk back along the hiking, bicycle trail that runs along the lake.  It is partially clear of ice and we decide to try it out.   When I come to icy patches, I go onto the bare grass instead.  Disobeying the “Stay on the path” sign, I opt for solid, frozen Earth instead of ice.  The path that we have walked along for years now is not safe.  We have to find another path.  This seems quite appropriate for this time of staying home to “flatten the Corvid-19 curve”.  But we are humans, creative and adaptable and we walk on the grass.  A few times, my partner offers his arm to help with my balance over small slippery patches which I navigate safely.  When we pass the houses of people we know, I wave, even though I can’t see anyone at the window.  I waved to the person driving the black pick-up that we passed on the road as well.  There is no harm in being friendly, from a distance.  We are all in this together after all.

We get to the bottom of our street where the other springs run down the road to the lake.  But today it is all ice.  I walk along the side of road on pavement and then have to hold onto my partner to cross a larger icy piece.  There is no other alternative it seems.  I can’t go it alone.  He discovers that the ice is soft and he crunches down a path for me to safely traverse. One more optical delusion crushed.  

And then we are on the road again and walking up the hill to our home.  We start to warm up as we go up the hill and I arrive back at the house warm and safe and feeling better for having walked.  And I am grateful that I didn’t fall as well.  In exercising caution and courage, I feel stronger and more able to pull up that same courage as I listen to the news and wonder about the future.  Like the young crows, I am not happy about this change.  I grieve for the status quo, even though I wasn’t in love with it.  I guess that’s just human.  I know that new things will be born from this time and that this disruption is also disrupting unhealthy patterns.

Then I read John O’Donohue’s poem Thought Work.

Off course from the frail music sought by words

And the path that always claims the journey,

In the pursuit of a more oblique rhythm,

Creating mostly its own geography,

The mind is an old crow

Who knows only to gather dead twigs,

Then take them back to the vacancy

Between the branches of the parent tree

And entwine them around the emptiness

With silence and unfailing patience

Until what was fallen, withered and lost

Is now set to fill with dreams as a nest.

Today, my friend sent me a picture of the tree that we adorned with our woven belts not even two weeks ago.  She has put up an invitation for people to leave messages in the woven belts.  To my delight, she sent a picture of the tree where a new story is being written by neighbours.

Weaving Women Back Into Matter

On the Saturday, just as things were shutting down, six of we women gathered to reflect on Weaving Women Back Into Matter.  This initiative of TreeSisters was the brainchild of Azul Thome who has been holding weaving events with women for a number of years.  Often, the women sit in a circle around a tree if outside or a plant if inside.  A rope around the tree gives the anchor for the woven belts which stretch out like spokes as the women sit on the rim of the imaginary circle.  While Azul has been holding small gatherings for years now, this international virtual gathering was in honour of International Women’s Day and Tree Sisters from around the globe were in attendance.

The original event

This event was a way for women to gather and reflect on how to nurture feminine nature-based leadership.  The weaving of long belts is about connecting things that are currently separate.  The strands of wool can represent anything the women want; themselves, others, nature, trees, spirit.  The list is full of possibility and open to imagination.  The physical act of weaving, of creating, in a circle of women is ancient and yet new to many women.  As we wove, we connected to each other through stories, through assistance, through paying attention, weaving the invisible threads that create community, society, global structures.  Natural objects were added to the weaving and braiding such as shells, leaves, bark, pine needles.  Prayers, hopes, and intentions were added through words written on paper and through the breath.

Azul Thome on right with belts wrapped around a tree

Azul envisions a belt woven by many women that would symbolically stretch around the waist of Gaia, the equator, which is 400,000 km in length.  According to her calculations, if 10 million women each wove a 4 metre belt, that would do the trick.  And so, at all the TreeSister events, the belts were measured and added up, to be a part of Azul’s vision.  It feels inspiring to be a part of such a bold vision.  Perhaps, by joining together with physical weaving, we are joining together on another level and thus weaving ourselves back into matter.  Our visions matter, our work matters, our way of being in the world matters.  Visions spark imagination, connections birth courage and our actions alter the course of history.

We six remembered that we were connected to the women who wanted to attend but couldn’t, to all of our own connections, to all the women who were taking part in this event, to all the TreeSisters, to all the reforesters in all the countries around the world and to all the trees.  As we wove, we listened to this beautiful song Weave and Mend written by Mary Trup and recorded by Frances Black.  Check it out:    

We tied out joined belt around a Maple tree on our hostess’ front lawn.  The city would like to cut it down to put in pipe but she is trying to work out another solution to save it.  She has a sign posted to that effect and we wound our belt alongside the sign.  Who knows what this may communicate to a man who shows up with a chain saw for the city.  A polite but clear sign with beautiful weaving may disrupt his business as usual approach.  I recently saw on-line that monks in Cambodia are ordaining trees with saffron cloth to protect the trees from illegal logging because no citizen of that country would kill a monk.  So, by wrapping a belt around and around this tree, are we sending a similar message here in Canada?  Perhaps, we will never know our own power, our potential for leadership until we use it.

Our tree with our weaving

And now, as I find myself home at the moment, as are millions the world over, I am continuing to weave.  After all, I have lots of wool left over.  I am thinking of women who are having a tough time and weaving a 4 m belt for them to join in Azul’s vision.  It feels grounding to weave.  I include my intentions and songs as I weave.  I will take pictures of the belts and email them to the women after having a phone call.  I heard this morning that we need to physically distance but social cohere.  By spreading apart for the common good, we are coming together in intent.  I read someone’s post on-line, that this feels like a great big opening for women to step forward with feminine nature-based leadership.  We don’t exactly know what this is, but our imaginations for healing and repaired relationships with Earth are being woven in.

The first belt I wove in honour of another woman wrapped
around the pot of the Norfolk Island Pine we used at our event.

Pausing to Listen

The channel on our part of Georgian Bay has opened with the milder weather and the water is full of migratory ducks; Buffleheads, Goldeneyes and Mergansers.  They have come back once again.  The trees on the shore are full of male Red-winged Blackbirds who are trilling their hearts out.  They will soon find marshy real estate to set up housekeeping with the females who will arrive once that work is done.  The nuthatches have started investigating our bird houses in the yard with nesting on their minds.  The pair of Robins near our dock were doing a mating dance yesterday.

Out in the bush, the snow is melting.  We walked there on the weekend.  I stopped to rub the needles of cedars, junipers, balsam, spruce and pine.  I breathed in the resins that were released deep into my lungs.  I know that they will improve my immune system.  The Japanese idea of “forest bathing” has taught us this.  In the cold weather though, I think maybe the resins won’t be released, so I gently rub the needles in my fingers and thank the trees for sharing their medicines with me.  Diana Beresford-Kroeger has taught me that the healing qualities of the resin will go from the air in my lungs into my blood stream and then to my immune system.  In this time of great uncertainty, I have taken that knowledge from an intellectual curiosity into practice.  In the bush, you wouldn’t know about the fear that is in the air for humans.  In the bush, spring is appearing and I am aware of the pharmacopeia that I am walking through.

We are being put “on pause” it seems.  Our very busyness and insatiable need to travel has helped to get us to this pause.  It is a shock to the senses and we must grieve the loss of the activities which we engage in while we try to project a future that will be different.  We, in the west are not so good at cooperating for the common good.  We have built our societies on individualism and now we are being asked, forced, scared into changing our behaviours to think of others.  Lives have become more important than money suddenly.  That is a paradigm shift for sure.  While we are being asked to socially distance and isolate, we realize how valuable our social connections are.  We are being asked to look out for the most vulnerable in our society and keep our hearts open.  Opening the heart is a good antidote for fear which shuts it down.

We are being asked by this situation to be creative, proactive, immediate.  In the spaces created by the pause, we can actually slow down, think about what is truly important and be creative.  Suddenly out in the bush feels safer than in crowds.  Out in the bush, life goes on.  We sat on a bench in the woods and had a snack while chickadees landed on the seeds we had placed on mitts and the top of my hat.  We welcomed their company.   My grandson sat on the snow, hand open with seeds in it and some on his hat while the chickadees whirred around him, feeding, singing, delighting our hearts.  Nearby, we could hear the drumbeat of the woodpeckers.  Our drum circle has been cancelled for the next month or so but we will drum in our home anyway.  Our story telling circle has been cancelled but people are trying to figure out how to do that through Zoom or Skype.  Parents are figuring out how to keep their school aged kids occupied for the next three weeks or so.  The experts recommend taking them outside to the parks, to the forest.

Our maple tree is sharing its sap with us.  We drink it straight from the tree as a spring tonic.  Today, I found onion greens poking out of the soil and added them to my sandwich.  I was so grateful for this gift from the Earth.  After lunch we walked in a different forest.  I picked up fallen hemlock and pine greens to take home and boil in water to release the resins into the house.  The smells are comforting and calming.  I scan the open areas for greens shooting up but so far none can be seen.  “Pay attention,” whispers the forest.  “We can teach you everything you need to learn about cooperating, about community, about being healthy.”  In the stillness from all the activity of business as usual, I am listening to this most ancient of stories.

A Sign in the Woods

Last Saturday, we were hiking in one of our favourite forests, Grant’s Woods, when my partner spied a sign announcing the AGM of the Couchiching Conservancy that owns and maintains the woods.  The guest speaker was to be Rick Beaver, an Anishinaabe artist and conservationist.  The meeting was for later that afternoon. 

Rick Beaver's artwork on mug

We went home for lunch and googled Rick Beaver .  It turns out that we have a ceramic mug with his artwork printed on it that was a gift.  Intrigued, we attended the AGM.  

The Couchiching Conservancy protects land that is donated and purchased in the Orillia area.  We have hiked on some of the properties protected by them and have been to one AGM previously.  This group is well run and able to raise money as well as provide programs and education very successfully. You can get a good idea about it from this youtube video:

It turns out that they have come up with a new strategic plan for the next five years.  In response to climate change, they believe that local action can help to solve global problems.  They also believe that every individual has a responsibility “to treat as sacred the healthy natural systems upon which we depend for our existence.”  They want to foster respect for all living things and seek a “reciprocal, respectful and protective relationship with the land.”  They “recognize that we are of nature, not external to it.”  They also recognize that they operate within the territory of the Indigenous people of the area and seek to be responsible treaty people.  And finally, they recognize that they are accountable to future generations.  This Declaration of Shared Principles was their first document to mention a relationship with Indigenous people and it spoke about a change of relationship with nature to one of responsibility, reciprocity and respect.

There were roughly 260 people in the room at the local Golf and Country club for this AGM.  Many had grey hair and were obviously financially well off.  They are retired professionals and business people who care about nature and maybe a few old hippies as well.  But, the Declaration of Shared Principles that I paraphrased above was from a different paradigm than the one that these people grew up in.  It was exciting to hear language of reciprocity and respect being used by this middle class group of people in a fancy golf club.

The executive director, Mark Bisset, gave an excellent talk about how he believes that small groups working all over the world will make the change that is necessary to limit climate change.  He likened the effort to the small boat owners who rescued soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk during World War II.

Rick Beaver

There were the usual financial statements, minutes, thanking volunteers and electing new board members before the guest speaker Rick Beaver came to the podium.  As an Indigenous biologist, he spoke about Indigenous principles and how his own community, Alderville First Nation is practicing land management.  Beaver spoke about the need for cooperation and heart-forward thinking since we are managing land collectively in Canada.  

He outlined several principles in an Indigenous worldview.  First, he spoke of the 7 Grandfather teachings; honesty, humility, love, courage, truth, respect and wisdom.  Taking care of the land and understanding that everything is connected came next.  Acknowledging the gifts we are given, replacing what you take, taking only what you need and letting the earth rest when there are shortages were additional principles relating to the environment.  Do not expect more every year, don’t harvest the first ones you see and only take a few if there is an abundance, less is there are few and none if it is rare.  When you find that you have more than you need, share it.  Leave the earth as your found it and think about the impact of your actions on the next seven generations to come were the final principles he spoke about.

Emphasizing the need for cooperation, Beaver cited that 40% of Canada’s 350 species at risk are found on First Nation land which constitutes .1% of Canada’s land mass.  He detailed ways for non-Indigenous people to form relationships with Indigenous communities to protect the land and these species.

This was surely a sign of the times.  Non-Indigenous settler people realizing that our ways have brought the Earth to potential great harm and declaring their intention to change their relationship with the land.  And then an Indigenous biologist gave us the principles for how to do that, from traditional knowledge that is thousands of years old.  Rather than spending time trying to figure out how to have a new relationship with the land, we just have to listen to someone whose has the traditional knowledge and then apply it.

Who knew that a sign in the forest would lead me to a golf club and there I would see the birth of a new story, a new way to relate to each other and to all our relations.

Matriotism and Circular Thinking

After three days of late February snowfall, we walked down to the lake to shovel off our dock.  The sidewalks had been plowed so walking was easy.  We passed a neighbour’s house and saw her blue box knocked sideways and semi-buried in the snow.  I stopped to pull it out just as she came out of her house with her dog and we spoke a few words before she got into her car.  Once at the end of the road, we trudged through the unplowed portion of the driveway to our little property on Georgian Bay.  Each taking a shovel, we pushed and lifted the snow off of our U-shaped dock onto the ice.  It had been windy during the storm and the ice had risen quite a bit so that the snow piled onto it was actually higher than the dock itself.

Warmed by our work, we took a few minutes to sit down and survey the frozen landscape of ice and rock and snow.  One snowmobiler whizzed past in the distance but otherwise all was still.  We could hear a few birds twittering nearby, maybe a nuthatch but something else as well that we couldn’t identify.  

Suddenly a beautiful robin landed on a tree beside us.  It hopped onto the Mountain Ash, Rowan tree and gobbled up a few of the remaining berries.  Then it sat high in the tree and surveyed the same view as we did.  We kept our eyes on it, thrilled to see this harbinger of spring amidst the snow and happy that our tree was providing food for it since the worms were buried safely in the earth.  Eventually, it hopped down and ate more berries.  Its feathers were fluffed out to keep it warm longer than we featherless creatures could. We trudged back up the hill to the fireplace inside the house.  But our hearts were warmed by the sight of the robin.

Two weeks ago, I was in my happy place, the local library.  I was in a section I had never been in looking for an audio book on Basic Ojibway.  My partner and I have been learning this language, now called Anishinaabemowin from an enthusiastic student of the language in a nearby town.  On the end of a row of books, was a display of books chosen by the librarians.  One grabbed my attention because on its cover was a bright painting in the Woodland Style of Indigenous art.  Reading the back, I was excited to discover that this was by a retired history professor from the University of Ottawa who is a member of the Wendat First Nation, Georges Sioui.  I live on the Wendat’s ancestral territory and have been trying to learn their story for a number of years now. 

As Sioui states in Eatenonha: Native Roots in Modern Democracy, “Once situated at the very heart of northeastern North America, our Wendat Nation was, because of the Europeans’ arrival, one of the most severely depopulated on our continent.  Having numbered between 30,000 and 40,000 at the time of contact, our Nation (we were, in fact, a confederacy of five nations) has now been reduced to a few thousand descendants who live on or claim affiliation to two Reserves;: one in Canada, close to Quebec City, named Village-des-Hurons (now renamed Wendake) and the other, situated in northeastern Oklahoma, named Wyandotte.” (p.  24)

Sioui, who was the first Indigenous person to earn a Ph. D. in history in Canada, describes how “by the time the Europeans arrived in their midst, the Wendat had created the most extensive, influential, prosperous, and virtually war-free civilization of trade anywhere in the northern part of the continent.” (p.11)  Through the study of original documents and oral history, Sioui describes the positive aspects of Wendat culture that can inform modern day Canada and provide solutions for the crises that we are now involved in.

Éléonore Sioui 

Sioui references his mother, Éléonore Sioui who was the first Indigenous person in Canada to earn a Ph. D. in Indigenous Philosophy.  “My mother," he writes,  "like many sages, believed and said that as long as man uses force to place himself at the centre of all his man-made world and its organizations, the only result to be expected is abuse, strife, dysfunction, violence, and degradation of the natural forces that give and sustain life in all its forms.” (p. 71)  And again, “…the most central tenet in her philosophy: that for any healing to be possible, the woman must return to the central place she once occupied in our nations.” (p. 71)

He goes on to describe the idea of matriotism as opposed to patriotism.  Sioui describes “matriotism” in which the “first loyalty of humans should rest with our common Mother Earth.” (p. 90).   The title of the book, Eatenonha means Mother Earth.  Matriotism is based on “our Wendat’s Indigenous thinking that our whole ability to live in balance, as humans, depends on our being conscious that it is our Mother Earth who sustains us physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.” (p. 91)  He therefore, sees his culture as “matriocentric” (Earth-based) whereas mainstream socio-political and religious systems are patriarchal and patricentric.  Sioui then goes on to describe ideas on “how to create true, inclusive circular (and Mother-centred) democracy. (p. 92)

You can hear Georges Sioui speak about matriotism in this youtube video: 

In Canada, we are in the midst of a time when some Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are standing up as land defenders.  Sioui sheds light on this based on a matriocentric worldview when he writes, “Indigenous people resist in the name of all the beings that are wantonly destroyed at every moment of every day: the forests and their inhabitants, the water, the air, the rocks, the people – especially the women, the children, the marginalized in society, the homeless, the artists, other creators, and so many people who have ended up in the jails for motives often invalid and unjust.” (p. 102)  By describing the circular thinking of a matriocentric worldview, in which women are at the centre of society, bringing nurturing and life-giving, new hope is offered to create an inclusive democracy.

This made me reflect on our government’s response to Indigenous land defending which I think could be accurately described as patriotic. Éléonore Sioui's words seems to apply to the forced installation of pipelines in the territories of land defenders: “abuse, strife, dysfunction, violence, and degradation of the natural forces that give and sustain life in all its forms”. 

Sioui wrote this book as a gift to the world which he sees is in need of help at this time. Like the robin on the snow covered tree, Sioui is a harbinger of a new season in our shared history and a bright voice of our new story.

Georges Sioui (2019) Eatenonha: Native Roots of Modern Democracy. Montrreal & Kingston:  McGill-Queen’s University Press.