Rites of Passage (Part 2) 2012

The sun just poked through a heavy mass of dark, thick clouds. It's so raw and so very sweet on this lake. The warmth is so appreciated, soaked up on a cellular level, but it's warm regardless of the sun appearing, as though the ground and air hold the heat longer than other landscapes I've found myself in. The water is now a bluer shade of green, but the thin line of turquoise still delineates the mountains from the weather on the water.

Three mountain ranges converge on the shores of this lake. Glaciers meet both sand dunes dispersed amongst pine forests and coastal rainforest. Glacial melt-off slowly seeps into warm waters as the sun begins its ascent. Wild horses, grizzlies, wolves, cougars, lynx, caribou, moose, and salmon all dwell here together. It's a very pristine and important place, and it's one of the last.

The first night out we made love. The moon was waxing, and we were still at the head of the lake at the authorized campground. Off in our tent, tucked off in the trees, bodies weary from spending all day in the cramped back cab of a pickup, our fingers and toes caressed and entangled one another. His touch smoothing out all of our wrinkles, mine attempting to fill in all the holes. Comforting and cradling, and calling each other home.

Every evening after we were privy to the longest sunsets I had ever seen. They would last for three hours, and would span the colour spectrum from blue to hot pink and deep red. And just as certain, as we watched the day's final light fade into grey, we would turn around to see the full moon raise her moon face over Mount Stupendous for us to have light again. And in the space between the light disappearing only to be reflected back to us, the loons would call. I love that sound. Wooden flute-like and eery. I've only ever heard them when everything else is silent.

That Wednesday, our fifth day out, we held a ceremony. It was the perfect day. The bluest of skies, a slight breeze, and warm, not hot. I woke feeling extremely content. The sun trickled down through the trees in front of our tent. Dreamy-like. Ethereal. The perfect tone to walk the rest of the day to. This morning I only sip coffee interspersed with sips of cactus. Ten small gulps, and I'm in. I've committed. The sun is warm despite the cool wind. We all lean on large, warm trees on the tumbled pebble beach. We have all drunk, and we have all gagged and cringed. It's an awful acrid taste. A fundamental property of the plant that keeps the juice sacred. Medicine. The next twelve hours will have our inhibitions, fears, and focus all compartmentalized, slotted just off to the side, so that we are left, unguarded, to unabashedly and authentically experience life.

photo credit: Stephanie Kellett

All day we played on the dry finger that lay behind our camp. There the Douglas firs held the trees. They were huge, these Firs, and their arms often supported up to three large wind-fallen trees. Mother Teresa's, or womanizers, either is sweet to envision. We slowly followed animal trails and slowly drank in the silence. I felt dehydrated of this way of being. Thirsty for spirit and connection to the wild. Then we found a grizzly bed, a depression scooped out by God's claws and lined with soft pine needles. It was large enough for either of us to curl up in, and we did. My love first, then I. You could see the lake from the bed, and knew that God had had that in mind when making it. Lying there, in the hollow, listening to the turquoise water, gazing at the weather on the surface of the lake, I felt him.

And there was more. On and on we explored. Following this trail, then that. Keeping our heightened silence. Celebrating it. We find a sweet fox den, and then caribou tracks, then moose. We listened to the short-wave broadcasts all around us; we knew which trail to follow, and which to respectfully turn away from. We experienced being watched and followed. I'm not sure I've ever felt like such an animal. Never felt so much like myself.

Rites of Passage (Part 1) 2012

There's a thin line of turquoise separating the mountains from the water. It spills out from the mouth of the glacier river to the south. As the sun traverses across the sky, the line grows in distance and girth. Slowly the deep blue lake lightens in hue as the two colours melt into each other in the most soothing way, only to begin again in the early of tomorrow.

I get irritated so easily these days. I can't seem to step outside of my life... I can't seem to allow for a different, more peaceful perception of my world either... and it's getting harder and harder to snap out of it.

I've been a bit of a monster all day. My thoughts are harsh thoughts and are harsher still amidst the dream-like tranquility of our backdrop. My love and I engage in the subtle dance of avoidance. Attempts at reconciliation have made it worse, the day stretches on past normal day lengths, and we both wish the whole trip won't be like this.  Silent prayers are cast into the dreamscape, drifting on the southern glacier breeze, bouncing off the three mountain ranges that converge on this Salmon fed lake.  The prayers hold an urgency, as though we both understand that this may be the last chance that we are both able to give the other...

The Douglas Firs are huge here. There, on a rocky, grass-lined bluff, the trees and the ancestors of this land sit. Like a single stalk of fireweed amidst a bone-dry forest, they hold space here, waiting.

Waiting peacefully for the others to remember. To join them in the peace and quiet. And it doesn't take long, this remembering. Simply a day or two, without any other input, in a place untouched by human folly. Theirs is simply a subtler frequency. Powerful when tapped into. They will never bombard you. They simply wait for you to listen and feel. They want to share with us. They know it's our birthright.

I am a thirty year-old child. On the outside I can manage life, and take care of my needs, but on the inside, I am stuck somewhere around the age of twelve. I never went through a rite of passage. I don't even know what that means, or what it might look like.

Most stories seem to be of young boys who attempt week-long sojourns, alone, to fast and hopefully vision-quest. For what, I never really understood. Bu what they discovered and realized would be brought back with them to their tribe, and because of this, they would be given new responsibilities and roles. I never had a delineation point. Some event in my life must have caused essentially the opposite to happen, for me to stagnate emotionally, while my body and mind continued to develop, and relatively no new responsibilities or roles were asked of me.  

In fact, thoughts of being alone, in the wild, for even a day, terrify me. Thoughts of being on a dirt road at night terrify me. Or did. Fear is so constricting. I can feel the power of it; like invisible shackles. Self-induced, and self-maintained, it keeps us from moving forward, or from even being able to dream larger than our environment. So what then? What will I make myself endure to finally see through it?

That question sends a shiver up my spine.

“Our culture no longer goes through any rite of passage. We are all allowed to be children in adult bodies.” My lover sees how damaged we all are. He understands that children who raise children slowly weed out the maturity and wisdom of the role known as elder. We no longer know how to access this role in ourselves, or access them. Perhaps clear cuts cause the same repercussions on the maturity and wisdom of the forests....  

Sometimes I wonder what this year is about. It is 2012, the year of prophesied apocalypse. But what if the proclaimed apocalypse is simply a rite of passage for the planet and its inhabitants? Will we pass into a new experience of life as we know it? One full of beauty, magic, and love unfathomable by our recent Western minds? Or will we instead choose to clutch to the known security of humanity's youth; disgracing ourselves and our lineage as we dye our hair blonde, smear on self-tanner, and continue to roller-blade with our fourteen year friends?

We Are The Weavers

I wrote this a lunar year ago, just before the February full moon of 2013, to accompany the exhibition of the five paintings embedded below. The paintings were created to tell the story of a group of friends who are actively creating and developing their own sense of tribe, stories, and indigenous relationship to themselves and to the land in which they live. That full moon I exhibited these paintings, this text (below), four other text pieces written by others who were present in those canoes that night, and even one of the canoes themselves. At the time of the exhibition, it had been a whole lunar year since the original canoe ride, and it has been another lunar year since the time of the exhibition. In keeping with this new tradition of February full moon magic and wonderment, I send this text and these images out to a greater audience in hopes that it will inspire more people to actively find their people and weave more magic into their lives and into the places in which they live.

We Are the Weavers

Once upon a time, many moons ago, we listened to the land. It spoke to us in many voices, told us of where we came from, where to go, what to eat, and gave us our songs.  

Those voices, of the trees, the land, and the ancestors, they patiently wait for us to remember. To join them in the peace and the quiet.  It doesn't take long, this remembering. Simply a day or two, without any other input, in a place untouched by human folly. Theirs is simply a subtler frequency. Powerful when tapped into, they will never bombard you, they simply wait for you to listen and feel.

Once upon a time it was easy to listen.   

Gather the Weavers...

A lunar year ago, ten of us gathered on the river shore. Into the water we lit three canoes and nestled in for the journey. The February full moon was bright, the sky was cold and clear. The river was slow and shallow, but it didn't dampen our merriment. It helped us soak in our surroundings, and the sense of peace that one can only experience while floating, bundled in blankets, under a starry winter night.

In our boat, I was in the middle. I was so cold they wrapped my entire self three times in blankets. Behind me, my lover, in front, my sister and the Head Seamstress. Her stitches were always perfect, and she had a gift of seeing the finished pattern before a single cut was ever made.

 

There were ten of us that night. There are more than that now. And after tonight, there will be more still.

Of the ten, some were clear, some were altered, and some were just along for the ride. Two fell in. Their feet and legs soaked up icy river, but their smiles and laughter never wavered. Their canoe held four. It was the party boat. There's always one. They brought the clowns and the fun. Our boat held the severity, the depth and the vision. Tucked between two paddlers, my eyes had time to take our journey in.

That night there was one who shared his birthday with the fullness of the moon. And like the moon, his face was always bright and full of mystery. He kept his secret the whole night so the celebrations could be everyone's.

There was also a silent heartache among us. Once our canoes reached their destination, her story wove into ours. Crystalline and smooth, the island's blanket of snow and ice silently held our footsteps. We moved across the cold surface to the middle of a ring of five hollowed Cottonwood stumps. There a warming fire was built. Then candles were lit and placed inside the five tall corpses to create a circle surrounding a circle; light encircling warmth. All of us gathered around our altar, except for one. Her absence made us feel her all the more.

Some of us were festive, some somber with gratitude. Yet all of us were there that cold winter night. We were learning to take care of one another, to listen-to each other and to the place. We were remembering how to Listen.

At the end of the night, we quietly boarded our vessels again, this time just a little more closely woven together, and we silently paddled home. 

Guilty of Guilt

It's subversive.  It's omni-present.  It's by association. 

Mothers learn it from their mothers, who in turn learned it from religion, who quite possibly made it up.  No one knows where it originated from, or how.

Guilt.  Not remorse or accountability, but the obligation and self-reproach side of the noun.

Guilt's not an emotion whose function directly corresponds to it's sensation in the body. Joy is the feeling you get when you are happy; sadness comes about when you are sad; anger is the rush one feels from feeling that you have been done wrong. Guilt can come about whether you have done something to be guilty of, or not. You can feel guilty for NOT doing something! Ecologically speaking, guilt may have been, at one time, a way of tightening emotional bonds between a human and his tribe, but today our beast-eat-beast society is promoting more and more isolation from one another. If our tribe is all but gone, what greater good does guilt serve? 

The other day I noticed that I was making decisions based on feeling guilty and obligated, instead of from a place of joy.  And if I'm not making decisions for my life from a place of joy, then I'll most likely end up miserable.  Most likely so will you.

Underneath It All

One deft movement had a tight knot of deep, burgundy spirals unfurled and loosely falling around creamy, freckled cheeks and down to the middle of a long, attenuated back.  She's tall and leggy.  Thin and defined.  Her cheekbones and jawline are strong, pronounced, and imbued with a quality that demands a visual listening.  She was sitting next to me, her long winter-paled fingers resting on my forearm. 
"I'm sorry.  I'm trying to impress you right now."  She admitted.  "I catch myself doing things like that all the time.  I'm realizing that I'm always trying to make people smile, or laugh, or say what I think they want or need to hear.  Sometimes I even catch myself making up answers to their questions...."
I caught myself staring.  She was stunning.  I felt stunned.  Her capacity to be that raw and vulnerable sent my head into a tizzy.  How did she know?  We had only chatted a handful of times before...
She met my gaze for a moment.  Then got up to head to the tub where she had drawn herself a bath.  She stopped just before the door.  "It feels really good to know that I'm lovable, even without the fluff."