Surprising to me, city girl, to have found so much to love outside of the city – 
I go whenever I can, and am taken aback by the enormity of the quiet, the riotous colours and life teaming so softly – 
Sunset to dusk to deepest dark of night to sunrise again, and another day begins… 
Weekly Photo Challenge – Happy Place
Tag: Georgian Bay
Beneath
The city had been disgusting with the heat – waves of it coming up like an open oven from the pavement at intersections, the apartment sticky and muggy and confining and gross.
The only thing I could think about was getting up north, getting into some water and swimming.
Swimming swimming swimming in the coolness of a lake.
Packing a few things into a bag, I came across this little pamphlet kind of thing that’s been kicking around for a while – it’s written by my mom, but I’m not sure when I got it or why, and when exactly it emerged from the archives and started floating around my reading pile, but there it was blinking up at me, and since all I could think about was swimming, I threw it in.
My mom used to be a prof, so she would do things like write books, and I remember one time when I was a kid asking her what the title of her book was, and she said, “Equivocal Predications”.
Oh. Ummm, right. Whatever.
So I wasn’t sure how far I’d get into this mysterious little pamphlet, but although it’s dense, it’s actually quite lovely, and I thought about the ideas in it as I went swimming each day in the cool deliciousness of a little bay.
In her opening, she says,
After positing that water has a body, a soul, and a voice, Gaston Bachelard argues in Water and Dreams, “Possibly more than any other element, water is the complete poetic reality”…
Floating, savouring, weightless and happy, chasing ducks and minnows, I remember what a passionate scuba diver my mom was – she couldn’t get enough of it and was always off on some trip to go diving.
She writes,
Until only recently, literature of the sea and its inherent poetry has been predicated on a superficial relationship between man and the sea: man on the edge of the sea or man on the surface of the sea. To go under, to go down in the sea, was to go the way of Plebase in “Death by Water,” losing the power of perception…
Now, with special equipment, men can experience the profundity of the sea: he can go down and still live to hear the poetic language of the deep of the sea. The action of going down is the gesture of knowing: the deep holds within it the secret of all that is unknown, the metaphorically profound, and the mystery of all that is “under” – including psychology’s unconscious and the mythic underworld.
Within the profound abyss, within the metaphor and experience of depth itself rests an expression, according to Merleau-Ponty, of divine Being – amazing us who might have expected and seen taught that God is transcendent and “above”: “Claudel,” he comments, “goes so far as to say that God is not above but beneath us – meaning that we do not find Him as a suprasensible idea, but as another ourself which dwells in and authenticates our darkness…
Weekly Photo Challenge – Beneath Your Feet
…with a special shout-out to my mom ❤
Musing on Georgian Skies
On July 3, 2012, when I’d had my first little starter DSLR camera for about 3 weeks and barely knew how to turn it on, I took the bus up to Collingwood for the first time, went for an afternoon walk and happened upon this scene –
The wind was blowing, a storm was on its way in, and I was thrilled by the blasts of wet air, almost sea-like, and the dramatic clouds everywhere.
I walked. I took pictures. I marvelled.
At the time all that was expected of the experience was a relaxing week up north on Georgian Bay – I had no idea this was the beginning of something.
But now, just about 3 years later, and many dozens of trips north with that camera and several others later, I can say…
Something happened.
Something grew.
That spot, happened upon by chance on a first day out wandering, and the surrounding hills and paths and parks, became my wild sanctuary, my muse, my special spot.
Weekly Photo Challenge – Muse
Floating
I had a date with Wind this morning.
Early, I told him. Sunrise. Our usual spot.
But when I opened the curtains as the faintest light began, there was no sign of him. He was a no-show.
He hadn’t been around for a number of days – dull listless grey days – so I’d thought maybe calling him up, specifically requesting his presence might help.
Apparently not.
Oh well, I thought, I can get a few errands done.
On my bike, heading towards town, he snuck up and flung a cardinal across my path.
Where are you going? Why are you ignoring me? Sulking, petulant.
Ignoring YOU? I cried out to the skies. You’ve been nowhere to be seen for days! I came up here for birds soaring in the wind, for dramatic Tom Thomson skies, and there has been nothing. Nothing but quiet.
He rustled in some grasses. Bare trees began to bend and the sun reached through some clouds, flickering and reflecting, beaming down onto the barren land.
Is this what you’re thinking? Some typical God shot?
Yes, yes. That kind of thing. Don’t be such a snob. I need something that I can, like, make into a poster and sell to Ikea or something and get rich.
You’re delusional, he said. He blew a sudden gust at me from behind and I caught a whiff of something potent, almost like Horse, but not here, I thought, must be Bear.
Looking around, I saw nothing – the bear would likely be across the inlet in the trees.
Nonetheless, I began to move. Thank you, Wind.
He shrugged, a tiny puff. Anyway you’re missing out on the subtler things here. The shifts in the melting ice. The returning birds. The grasses dead and decomposing and being reborn. Each day is slightly different – more melting, more growing, more movement. Just look at that one wee swan out there, lost in the ice.
And the strange prickly shapes that happen as the ice begins to fragment and disperse – the mini-icebergs in the water and how their edges turn into little quartz crystals as they shift and bump.
Or the pre-historic looking circles, the water melting on top of the ice, reaching down to the water below, seeking itself, seeking warmth, carving shapes.
Maybe if you spend a little more time with these small miracles, I will put on a show for you another day.
And then he was gone.
There was still time for errands.
Weekly Photo Challenge – Afloat
* * *
This post felt like it blew in, appropriately, from 4 Directions.
The most immediate prompting came from Promptress Supreme, Jena Schwartz, who leads delightful writing groups, whose Day One susurration teased out this dialogue with place.
A deep rumbling influence has been an online course I’ve been taking on Shamanism with Sandra Ingerman. Weekly journeys, the drumming, the focus on the elements, the dialogues with the animals, have all made it increasingly normal, and even urgent to have conversations with the Natural World.
Some months ago I read an exquisite little book by author / illustrator Jackie Morris, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, in which there are fascinating seductive conversations between the main character and the 4 Winds – East, South, West and North.
And wearing away at my mind like water for months, or maybe it’s years now, is the achingly beautiful poetry of my online buddy, Em, and her many playful and poignant conversations with the elements in her part of the world.
Thirds of Snow
It is nighttime. Dark.
I am crossing a bridge.
The wind blows the snow – a ferocity of stinging, blinding blizzard everywhere.
I can barely see.
It is so strong this wind, I begin to lift up into the air – just the tips of feet at first, the wind strengthens and howls, lifting me higher and higher into its violent whims.
I am in danger of getting blown right off this bridge.
I can see the lights of cars in the darkness, also trying to cross the bridge in the storm.
I hope they know I can’t control what is happening here.
I may blow into them.
They may even blow into me.
Nothing is guaranteed.
Nothing is under control.
It is the weather presumably – this deep winter we’re getting here, which has provoked the dream.
The other day I stood at the edges of Georgian Bay, on a field of wind-blown ice, not knowing for sure how far off the coast I had wandered, but somewhere out beyond the edge of shore into what was shapes of frozen waves over the open water.
Standing still, after the crunch of feet on snow, the silence was deafening.
Then, deep treacherous groans. Cracks. Thunders.
The water moving, pulsing, pushing underneath the ice.
But today – that image of a bridge in the dream…
Transitions, I think. The obvious metaphor.
The sensation of a dangerous period of change.
That stretch of darkness when you can’t see the other side, and have no idea if you’re going to make it.
But I’m surprised a bit, as most days I feel the calmness of a cat who knows she’s got nine lives…
Weekly Photo Challenge – Rule of Thirds
Unusual POV – bird sanctuary and more
Today was a bird day. Bit by bit I worked my way out into the folds of the bird sanctuary, knee deep in the water, scrambling on rocks increasingly covered in bird poo, assuring me I was in their territory. Many of them flew away at my approach. Others stared coldly. I waited. I figured if I hung out long enough they’d get used to me.
Wednesday was a mammal day. I biked some 36km to Thornbury and back, seeing bunnies and chipmunks darting across the path. On the way back, the sun going down, I passed through a patch of air so rank and funky I knew there was something big in the bushes, likely bear.
Thursday was looking like it was going to be all cute little bugs – caterpillars and locusts and this very charming ladybug –
But when I looked up from the rock where I’d cornered this poor little guy, a snake slithered past into a small tuft of grasses and a frog bounded away, saving himself.
The snake both spooked and thrilled me – I haven’t seen a snake in years, had forgotten their creepy eerie magic, the way they glide effortlessly along the earth.
Riding out, I had to swerve to avoid a toad on the path.
Insects, reptiles, amphibians.
But today was birds.
Swans, geese, ducks, and gulls by the dozens. Their sanctuary so still and peaceful I lost interest in photos and simply contemplated the sky. And when a heron flew overhead, just 2 meters above me, I didn’t even turn on my camera but just stared at his strange pterodactyl body and listened to the faint metallic whoosh of his wings.
Peace.
weekly photo challenge – unusual POV
Sea (or not)
Actually it isn’t the sea, it’s a lake. And in fact it’s only the bay of a lake.
But it’s pretty fucking huge.
And powerful.
And these days quite, um, cold.
But like look at that –
That is one big body of water. And it isn’t even the biggest one.
Once I flew from Toronto to Winnipeg and we passed over Lake Superior. That shit went on for days. Huge, massive lake.
Not quite the sea, not the moody enchantment of the Atlantic off Maine or Connecticut, not the terrifying energy of the Pacific off Vancouver Island, not the inviting enrapture of the Caribbean but….works for me.
Weekly Photo Challenge – sea
Focus / unfocus
The egret was fishing in his usual spot in the river – he can be found there most mornings. So I was taking photos of his strange egret-y shape, gangly and odd and awkward, he flying away further upriver whenever I got too close, moving us both further and further upstream, until I sensed something in the grasses behind me.
There was a presence – or perhaps a flicker in the peripheral vision – of movement, of something, of someone.
And then I saw him – utterly still in an effort to remain invisible.
Forgetting the egret now, eyes focused into the grass, I managed a couple of photos, but when I moved and looked again, I’d lost him.
Wandering deeper into the field, trying to track him down, I realized there were tiny flecks of blue everywhere in the tall grasses around me.
The entire field was filled with strips of blue, and now, forgetting the bunny after forgetting the egret, I focused on the dragonflies, many of them having their private moments in flight, hovering, or resting briefly on the stalks.
What an intruder I was to each of these critters, and yet, invasive human, I didn’t hesitate.
Weekly Photo Challenge – Focus
Foreshadow of mortality
Out for a walk along the shore today I began to collect things. Little fragile things that appealed to me that I thought best to put in a baggie if they were to have any hope of making it home intact. When I got home hours later, the collecting already forgotten, I found the baggie with its assortment of tiny delicate objects.
There was something about the plastic and the randomness of the items that made me think of the drawers of collections at a natural history museum – a jumbled assortment of various species of flora, crustacea, stone and insects.
Each thing seemed to be in a state of deterioration, a point along the meridian of birth, life, and disintegration, suggesting its own mortality – a kind of foreshadowing of our own short time here. 
Weekly Photo Challenge – Foreshadow
No mind
Early this morning a dream of a deer, come to the door of a house I was just leaving. I thought he was an unusual sighting in a suburban neighbourhood as he turned and ran away revealing a fox tail rather than the little white cotton puff. Excited, I turned to my host, who seemed non-plussed, as though deer were frequent visitors in his neighbourhood. But when I went out again to the street, the deer was back, his expression deliberate, gesturing with his head for me to follow him around the corner, where it turned out an old friend was giving birth.
Today on Facebook, I see that a photo I took up north weeks ago is featured on the Ontario Travel page.
I took a lot of photos while I was up north.
I loved the experience of it. Of getting up early, heading out into the morning light and feeling a kind of no-mind creative process – different from writing. Different because it seemed like the best way to connect with my surroundings was to be empty, to just be present in my body in the space…..waiting, feeling, breathing, sensing.
Riding and walking the trails around Collingwood, I found it easy to get very quiet inside myself. I’d heard in the past about “walking with your power animal”. It sounded faintly pretentious and I wasn’t sure really what was meant by it.
But I started to feel it. I started to feel like that’s what I was doing. Walking as if. Walking inside the animal. Walking AS an animal – listening, smelling, feeling the light shifts in the air.
Rustles and snaps of twigs in the brush, in the forest made me stop and listen, waiting to see who was there. All senses poised as carnivorous predator, hunting for the next shot.
Strangely enough, sometimes it seemed as though the hunted waited, wanting to have their picture taken.
