Wayfinding

Amidst the west coast fogs of August and smoke from burning forests throughout this province, I paddled with a group for 12 days this past month. The coastal wilderness we travelled through remains one of my favourite places around this island - magical, ethereal, filled with changing light and oceanic textures. 10 years ago I paddled this same section of coast for the first time. At that time, fairly new to a sea kayak, I felt at the mercy of swell and wind and coastal bathymetry; I had moments of terror on that first trip that I have rarely or ever experienced before or since in any wild landscape. Coming from a river environment, I was used to dynamic water, understanding the way that a boat can get pushed around by waves and current, and how to respond, but the verticality and sheer power and volume of the ocean was intimidating. All things moved on multiple axes, the scope so large that it caused me to lose my bearings. There were currents which were invisible to me, so large and influential that I could not perceive them, waves emanating from sources tens or hundreds of miles away, and from below. Fog drifted in white walls that obliterated visibility as we inched up the coastline. My paddling partner kept disappearing behind mountains of swell, dipping dramatically in and out of sight as we rounded each jutting headland. My normally loose hips (save ships) were tight. In those moments of blindness I felt very alone, exposed and small - a tiny speck of cork bobbing on a monstrous sea.

But in the past decade the ocean and I have become friends, and while she owns my respect, she no longer feels so threatening. Even in those moments when she challenges me, as she rolls and blows and pushes in thick with foggy blankness, I trust her. And I trust myself and the tools I have garnered over the years before and since my first introduction to this Pacific creature. The rivers will always have my heart, but so does she. And she is full of ideas, living metaphors for this journey that I am on.

This past month I had the fortune to circumnavigate these same islands, one of many wild homeplaces I have been lucky enough to inhabit and love. It was an extended time to explore corners I had not yet or rarely had the time to see on shorter trips. The 'outside' or west facing coasts of these islands are known for their exposure to wind, swell and fog, and on some days these forces can conspire to complicate or prohibit passage by kayak. On the day we paddled around the most exposed bit of coastline the forecast predicted some manageable but significant swell and light winds, and a promise of lifting fog that seemed to be manifesting as we rounded the first headland. But soon the only thing that became clear in the rolling sea was the white wall that shrouded our progress and remained stuck in, thick and pernicious. I responded to the conditions by consulting my quiver of tools; the simultaneous use of compass bearings, watch, calculations speed over distance, the minutest details of the coastline features matched between chart and barely observable reality. Even my ears were pulled into the game as I listened for the sounds of waves crashing on rocky shelf to gauge distance from the shore in different spots. I chatted to those closest to me, mostly about navigation, shoulder checking every few moments for those just behind, our group tightly packed, my staff partner shepherding the back of the group, a couple of whom were feeling sea sick in the poor vis. It was fun, absorbing, and engaging technical work which did not allow for a moments' lapse in attention. At each rest stop I checked and rechecked landmarks, noted and counted visible points and backstops, tracked our drift forward or back, took into account time or distance lost.

A few hours in we stopped again, this time on the home stretch, but with a boat in need of a tow I unlocked my focus from wayfinding for just a few moments. After a few minutes I realized I had lost our exact location, and scrambled to pinpoint it as we passed a few tightly spaced headlands. But towards these last few miles a sound had begun to come to us through the fog, the whistle of a navigational marker known to lie about a mile southeast of our final destination.

At some point someone asked me how I was keeping a fix on our location and what slipped out of my mouth was 'by feel'. I laughed and quickly corrected myself by explaining the myriad of concrete tools at my disposal, but the truth of that first thought hit home. This is just it, all these tools, the skills I have learned over time are the gifts of 'feel', an intuition that is made up of faith, skill and a focused and expanded awareness. There are components of this that are 'technical' - speed over time, magnetic bearings, navigational aids and markers.  And then there are things my gut and body tells me. Even when external reality seems to deny them, they garner a kernel of truth that can be counted on. I am good at recognizing and following my instincts and trusting my skills on the water, but in the past few years have lost faith in myself in other ways.

This past month the ocean reminded me that I have done the best that I can, given the complications and challenges I have faced in the parts of my life that are most tender. And my best has been pretty good - I cannot be faulted for a lack of self examination. I am worthy of my own trust, despite having wandered off course at times. This has not been a squandered life, because amidst this foggy section of the journey I still have myself and all the things I have learned and know. I am allowed to be happy, to find myself in the right place at the right time, if only by navigating the uncomfortable blindness by the handrails and landmarks that show me I am on the right track. And not losing faith when I seem to have drifted.


What I know is this - I must pay attention to the minutest details of this coastline, listen in for the sound of surf  and watch for the rocks and headlands as they emerge from the fog. I will stay present to what is directly in front of my hull, and keep my senses tuned to the magnetic bearing of my heart. Keeping my eyes open to the reality of the emerging landscape I will find my way home. I will try to remember that sometimes in the lee of the most formidable rock gardens there is shelter for a safe landing.

Blackberries

Blackberries

I rode my bike to and from work yesterday. It's that time of year here, where seemingly every street in Victoria proffers up a bounty of blackberries. I had ridden past a swath of intense ripeness near my office a couple of days before. The berries were fatter, shinier and more plentiful than any others I had seen this year. The bushes were literally dripping with the things, protected from human detection on this suburban stretch of pedestrian-unfriendly road. On that day, I had no container with me and was also in the throes of inertia. Once in motion it's easy to keep going. I was on the way to work, which is an hourlong ride, and to stop a few hundred meters before reaching my destination represented a delayed arrival, and later departure at the end of the day. The feeling of being on borrowed time welled up. So I rolled on.
Yesterday morning I stopped long enough to fill a travel mug and set them out on the counter for my co-workers when I arrived at the office. On the way home I had two empty lunch containers and a water bottle so stopped for much longer. As I picked I considered the process of the harvest. Blackberries bushes, especially these wild imports are intensely brambled. Every square inch of them is equipped with tiny and not so tiny barbs, ready to impale, embed, scratch and snag any piece of exposed skin or clothing that brushes up against them. At first, overwhelmed by the sheer density of the things, I tried to take more than one berry at a time, but soon found myself recoiling or dropping one or all of them as the plant's defences did their sharp work. Unlike blueberries, which is a friendlier plant, grabbing hasty fistfuls is not an option. My urge towards efficiency, to pluck more than one at a time, was having the opposite effect.
While I do my best to be aware of the feeling of rushing through things in my life killing two birds with one stone is often my modus operandi. This past couple of weeks when I have been walking my dog Kimik after work I have been taking him past the berry bushes near my house. He doesn't like this because his sniffing agenda gets curtailed by my picking agenda, and sometimes I am anchoring him too close to something prickly under his paws. He plants his feet and resists. Sometimes we stop at the little market on the way home too...so I don't have to go out for groceries afterwards. Kimbo doesn't like that either as he's not great at being tied up outside the store - if another dog walks by it triggers armageddon. He's a bit like a blackberry bush that way, I pay the consequences if I try to combine too many tasks with him. Multi-tasking is not supported by either of these beings.
Yesterday afternoon I picked slowly, methodically. Moving with my back to the traffic, I meandered along the row of bushes, taking one dark berry at a time, dropping each one into the container for the ride home. I dropped fewer, was stabbed less, and took the time to wait for the sway of each stem to slow before going in for the next one.
This is not new, this reminder to slow down and rest in the moments. It is just the next wave, some new stage of remembering to pause and take stock. On the rest of my ride home a quail chirped at me from the railing by the side of the bike path - it was inches from my face. A young stag watched me ride past, his ears flicking. I saw more things on my way, felt the way the air moved and changed against my skin, and allowed myself to drop into the sensation of pedalling up hills, less hellbent on getting to the top. More willing to let things be.

Swimming Towards the Bubbles

A few days ago I happened upon on old journal. I have a few of those around, as I am often gifted and gift myself with notebooks. Some of them like this one have only seen a few pages of use. In amongst the expanse of empty pages, I found a reminder of something I had forgotten. It was a scrawled collection of bulleted notes from a conversation I'd had with an intuitive over 4 years ago. It took me a few moments to place the entry, dated only by the month but contextualized by the references to events and concerns that had filled my life at that time. They were scribbled in haste in the rush to capture her words and my anticipation of hearing some clarifying insights from the ether after a heartbreaking and painful period.

I am fascinated at how these missives have reappeared to me now, and wonder what wisdom they may have to offer me 4 years later. Life has certainly been eventful since then in both beautiful and deeply unsettling ways. Although life is primarily good and I am grateful for all of it, there are still layers of grief my body is still working to metabolize.

The intuitive had offered up a series of images, because that is how things came to her. As I re-read them, my eyes fell on these words:

'...swim in the direction of the bubbles, when we are turned upside down going in the direction of inertia. Relax...counter-intuitive but wise. Figure out which way is up. Don't follow the same pattern...'

She pictured me underwater, my bearings lost, the aerated surface distant and unseen from the depths of a dark pool (ocean?). She tells me to be still, relax, wait and let the bubbles rise then swim in that direction. I ponder now the source of these little balls of air - my own breath? The movements of some other creature? The inevitability of life rising up from somewhere deep below me?

At the time, and at a few times since I have felt thus disoriented by life, by events, by the actions and inactions of those I care about and am influenced by. Turned around underwater. For a while now it has also felt like a piece of me, the Dreamer, has been holding it's breath, not wanting to move, needing to hide itself away for a time. That part has felt battered and has needed time to heal - to protect myself against the possibility of further injury.

In recent years I have sometimes measured my own worth through the absence of others, and that is not a way to live. My greatest and deepest desires have felt pummelled into a thin dust at my feet, in some part, but not utterly by my own hand, and I am not sure what to make of that. The desires I have are to be met, to see and be seen, to hold and be held in a shared light. This is 'what I was made for' to steal some words from another once much loved but absent soul. It could be that there is a power in saying it, for expressing this deeper and universal calling for belonging and connection. Maybe I am exposing this part of my soft underbelly and risking, as I sometimes do, to be pitied or feared or shamed. Maybe that is a risk worth taking, because it is healing and beautiful to write these words.

Over a year ago I took a call. Prior to that my life had felt like a bit of an emotional maelstrom for a number of months, a constant clamour of need from without. I felt pushed when all I wanted was to hide away for a while, to wrap myself and the people and events of my life in a cocoon-like pause. A few moments to breathe, take stock, and allow the bubbles to rise. But the universe was having none of that and was delivering a further push, an unwelcome pressure I was not equipped to deal with well. More than that it was poking me on sacred ground, a trusted territory I had never imagined could be tampered with.

On that day, it felt like just another concussive blow to my heart and nervous system. Instead of pausing or allowing myself time to consider a fully formed response, I reverted to a practiced default - my inertia move. On the phone I was full of grace, no doubt responding in just the perfect way, offering non-dualistic acceptance, support, affirmation. What I was not able to do was to speak the truth of my unreadiness, instead voicing the internal setting which goes something like this:
"It's ok. I can handle this. Don't worry about me."
In those moments on the phone, underneath the apparent grace and simple truth of my words, I remember most clearly the upwelling of a voice in my head saying  'you've got to be effing kidding me.' I had been so exhausted already, why was I being asked to withstand more?
Maybe because that is what I constantly ask of myself, and felt shame and unworthiness for even having a more nuanced response.

Ironically, it is the unspoken truth that tends to follow up with a vengeance on the coattails of such things, sometimes messily. By subsuming that second voice, an equal and opposite reaction was triggered.  Like whiplash, it caught me (and others) off guard. I have less of an earthy stoicism than I would like to think. I feel attachment and pain, tend towards expressiveness when hurting and need time to process and talk and feel my way through things - I am learning to allow for that. Perhaps I can be forgiven and understood by others for these things as well, though that is not something within my control.

In the weeks that followed I and others suffered the fall out of my own conflicted responses. The inertia of the situation seemed to me unstoppable, freight-train like, made worse by my initial acquiescence. To onlookers, I probably seemed insane. In the course of a few days I had an epiphanic change of heart, and communicated this with honesty, pure intention and with what felt to me like a deep vulnerability. I was rebuffed and felt exposed, at fault, regretful, scared, as well as conflicted and disloyal in sharing my truth. I imagine I was perceived as manipulative, fickle and inconsistent. Unkind and insensitive.

I have a coffee cup that a dear friend gave me - it is thickly made and earthy and is etched with the words "I am strong" on the base. I have, over the years and throughout my childhood, internalized this message - I think I can own the fact that at my best I have a powerful and willowy resilience. I am not (too) afraid of conflict and prefer it when difficulties are openly and compassionately engaged, knowing it can lead to transformation, redemption and magic. However, one of the more problematic strands of this weave is a deep rooted desire to not be a bother, not to get in the way. There is sometimes an altruism in that - a desire to see the people I love happy and a deep trust in the way things unfold. But there is also no doubt that this stoicism is tied up in a sense of unworthiness. I also can, when pressed, have trouble imagining a way for apparently conflicting needs to be met. So I remove my own, turning them inward. And I have a short fuse for suppressed emotions.

Historically I know how all this is connected to having been the least in need of my family constellation - the youngest but the most ok, able to withstand not only the winds of absence, neglect and abuse, but also to rise and deepen despite of it.  Maybe even because of it, using the fertile soil of adversity as fodder for growth. On the dark side, it may be because I am strong that I will initially defer my own needs. I know I can survive, but ultimately life should be about more than survival.

There are bubbles going up...somewhere. I need to trust that. To rest in this stillness despite the cacophonous demands of the human world for movement. The perceived pressures and expectations of my age, my status, my 'failures' in relationships. I need to hold, not my breath, but my own hands to stop them from clawing their way to the next false surface of this vast and dark ocean. In the scribbled words from the barely-used notebook I found this week, I need to do my best to be still and let the universe meet me half way.


**Post-script: My writing often emerges as a reflective tool, a healing process, a way into the next phase. It is the crack in the seam that bubbles with life when there is no opening for real dialogue.  Thus, it is subjective and reflective of my own experience.

Soulful

Sometimes you just have to claim what's yours,
And this is mine.

Soulful,
Artful.
I am
Far from perfect,
Slightly guarded but wildly open.

Pay attention, and
You may get a small window into this
Spirit.
Caught in the flight of dance,
Music,
Light,
Careening around the open field.
Broken, unbroken.
Again and again.

When you let yourself be influenced,
Like I have,
Allowed the ethers to steal your magic,
Essence by essence.
Stripping you of your innocent nature.
When you believe in projections
You become dilute.
Watered down in self doubt.
Loss and hope,
Unfettered and unclaimed.
Sometimes it feels safer to be this way.

But
In the sweep of redemption that never happens
I am
Losing faith a million times.
I crack,
To find more pieces still clinging
To the life raft
Within.
Lying dormant at the level of soul
I find
Remnants of a self
Magnetically seeking it's own shards
In the push and pull of this
Spring tide.
Becoming whole.

Once again
I see her
This creature of adolescent dreamscapes.
She is the same
But also utterly different.
She is me.
Lost, found and abandoned
In the crash of this
Ambient moment.
Through the trees
She is coming home again.

Second Life

I've been thinking recently how great it would be if I had two lives. Not so much one after the other so much as one that paralleled this one. You see it seems that I am constantly faced with choices, too many things that I want to say yes to and only one life worth of time and energy to do all of them. It is a privileged position to be in for sure, but it makes me wonder what fuels this desire for a second life.

Part of it, to be completely honest, is about FOMO. Fear of Missing Out is one of the banes of my existence. It is a problem. Just in the past month I can probably list about 6 events, trips or gatherings that I have not been able to go to because I was doing something else. Each time I say no to something that conflicts with something else on my schedule I feel like I am missing out on an opportunity to show up and do something cool. I am also quietly haunted by a sense that my absence will precipitate some loss - as if by not showing up I will somehow be stricken from the list of invitees or worse, forgotten entirely. Not missed. That terrifies me, and I am very aware of how narcissistic that might be. I need to feel like I belong, and am wanted at the party.  The feeling  of exclusion is a trap for me. It may not be pretty, but it's true.

Another piece of this second life business is about energy. I find these days that life is an intricate dance between taking action and engaging in experiences and taking refuge in the pause. Exertion, either physical, geographical, emotional or spiritual must be balanced with restfulness. There is refuelling that needs to be done, and if we ignore that need we tend to trammel ourselves in an overcommitted slurry of doing and striving. It's not that I don't want to stop and rest, it's the opposite -  I love resting, but sometimes is feels like resting comes at a cost. And I want to experience all of it - the oasis and the adventure, the party and the sleepy mornings over coffee with nowhere to be.

I think about this in bigger terms as well. I am aware that there have been times in my life where I have feared making a choice. I have hesitated, or tried to hold the inevitable rush of passing time at bay, tried to hold the people, or my idea of them in stasis around me until I have had the time to gather my wits and make the 'right' choice or action. But this is impossible, and in many cases, once we have walked by a fork in the trail, even if we have willfully paused only a few steps beyond the juncture there is no going back. Sometimes the trail has been erased, by circumstance or the movement of others, or simply by the same magic that made it appear in the first place. At other times the landscape has changed entirely in the space of our hesitation and to make our way back to that path is too arduous or thick with brambles to undertake without completely losing ourselves along the way. Sometimes what feels only a breath away is really long gone. This is a lesson worth remembering.

This summer I have made choices. I am blessed to have the luxury of a generous share of time, a lack of stress or material need and the gift of opportunity. And this is what I will try to sit with, as I struggle with the privilege of wanting.  I will trust that the choices I am making are setting me on the right path

.

Salt

Every 18.6 years the tide cycle in the Pacific Northwest repeats itself. So perfectly predictable, it is a pattern created by solar and lunar orbits that brings about the exact same measurements - to the centimetre - on each place on the coast. We commonly think about tides in relation to a daily and monthly schedule, the higher high and lower low waters, the springs and the neaps, so it is always surprising to people when you tell them about this larger, multi-year pattern of highs and lows. Nature has a precision we cannot hope to replicate, and yet we often characterize her as chaotic, cacophonous, unbridled. 'Wild' is a word often used to describe people and things that are without discipline, impulsive or wanton.

I returned home this week from a 9 day trip on the ocean, skin and soul scrubbed by saltwater and the finest sand. I am tired, back in the routine of a regular job after being on ocean time, having returned to the lee for a short break from the windy side of this island. My clock has been reset by a feral kind of symmetry; I have made this way of living a bit of a habit, moving back and forth between the urban and the wild, always working on evening out the pendulum swing.  Always seeking just the right mix of movement and staying put. It is as good as it gets right now - I have called it perfect, this balance of freedom and stability that I have built. My nomadic soul has always wanted to meet it's more settled twin, and this is possible now. Perhaps it is already happening and they are twining fingers and staring into each others eyes just beyond my line of sight.

The wild west scours me clean and works it's magic on my nervous system. I sleep well, bathed in a soundscape of dumping surf - and the slow inhale as the sea sucks itself back for another assault on the shore. Since the first time I travelled up this particular bit of coastline by kayak I have noticed that the ocean is a breathing thing. It reminds me to breathe more fully and I make a point not to forget this when I am back in the city.

It seemed like there is often no pause between these two realities, but sometimes I am aware that this life is made of nothing but pauses. The only adversity I feel is what I drum up from the inside, looking to find discord where there is none, creating a sense of rushing when I have already arrived, a sense of lack when I am steeped in riches; I am just like a human being in that way. Always on the lookout for imperfection, or trouble, or something that is somehow not enough. But these days the blows from within seem to glance off me like water rolling off freshly preened duck feathers. There is a smoothness to things, like polished beach stones.

The Green Corridor

I won't do it justice, because the moment has passed, but as my bike coasted along the downhill slope yesterday on the way home from work I felt surrounded, encased in the green world. A protective boundary of verdant spring foliage, dappling sunlight sneaking through the gaps in the leaves. The perfect temperate air flowing around me, slipstream unused at my back.  The world here is almost always green, but spring is still bursting.

It is a truth that not all the things I long for are here in this season, and still nothing is missing. There is a contentedness, a gratitude that suffuses the moments like the scent of the newly fledged leaves surrounding me. It is not hope, but it is grace. An allowance for all the wrongs done by my errant heart. A forgiveness for all the wounds unknowingly inflicted, and for the meanings randomly assigned to each broken piece of glass. I am learning how to stay in place, by allowing that place to change as the seasons do.

I am lucky to have landed here. Amazed at what I have been granted in work, the creative freedom, paired with a material security that has the effect of calming the nervous system. I no longer say yes to all the things - perhaps finally understanding the space needed between projects and adventures. The need for some measure of staring into space, for stillness. In the coming months I am transformed again - almost half of every month immersed in wildernesses of my choosing. The deep oceanic work of summer. It is an alchemical time, a confluence of magic, humanity, connection and the wild lingering places. It is the journey work of souls and the source of all imagination.

I can lean into it all, knowing that life takes time, and change is a given. For now, I have some constants; a home, friends and people who love me, the perfect mix of stability, freedom and creativity in my work. I am learning how to bring my gifts to more of the things in life, even the mundane and seemingly routine motions of a modern existence. Although that will always be a work in progress. I am in the green corridor, which is beautiful for it's own sake, immersive and sensory, but perhaps also a gateway to what is unfolding.