Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
reflections on a broken ankle
i have been sluggish with work this week, lazy from the heat or just the general mid-summer vibe – i’m not sure – but it is making me unproductive and distracted.
i worked from home yesterday, too disenchanted with the city to leave my apartment and get myself to the office – toodled around on email, fixed some documents i have been working on, and occasionally throwing things into boxes around my apartment which has steadily grown in untidiness. i did manage to get some of the items i am giving away into my car and to their new owners at the end of the day before meeting my friend steph for a early-evening hike at lynn headwaters. i forgot my hiking socks and did over half the hike in my sandals which was not as bad as i thought it would be. apparently my joints and tissue are pretty much back in order, a year after the accident – though i still am leading with my left side, a compensation i haven’t given up on.
funny enough, exactly one week short of the one-year anniversary of breaking my ankle – i am embarking on another 4-day (42 km) trip with friends in manning park. we will leave next friday morning and return on the monday – hiking in the sub-alpine meadows surrounded by the rising peaks. this is a spectacular time of year up there, with the fragile grasslands in full bloom, ripe with the brief spring of the mountains.
so here it is – testing myself like this for the first time, carrying now extra weight in my body in the form of 2 plates and 6 pins my bones will forever grow over, causing a hardness to the outer skin that could only exist with the insertion of foreign objects. if i meditate briefly on the event of last summer, i can access the immediate fear of the moment which gave way to the care and support of my hiking partner and close friend who washed my hands and held me in the sunset waiting for the rescue to arrive. my wool sweater and his head resting against me will forever be etched in my memory as a flashflood of a total love and support that i had never known existed before then – though possibly i had accessed it as a child, not so consciously.
breaking my bones was a gift of self-reflection and a lesson in self-knowledge – and prepared me for the things that followed, paring me to the core so i could learn to walk again, and live a different way – something i am getting better at as i work my way through each new door that opens. i am trying to keep back the fear that makes me cautious, trying to open myself without feeling foolish or having reservation, and watching for the moment i see the whole healed against all the heart-sickness of this world.
i am eager for this trip and at the same time hesitant, for while i crave the sky and the meadows, the mountains and the pine forests, i am reminded how easy it is to fall or to fail – and how a part of you can get broken through no real doing of your own.
this is the practice of living i am working at.
amp
someone asked me awhile ago for the link to the “activist mobilization platform” software i mentioned in this space a couple of months ago. it can be downloaded here.
bureaucracy, politics and my new house
and now for a more comprehensive update……
the new cabinet was announced today and apparently our cabinet minister has not changed – it’s still the east coast guy which i think is a tad unfortunate because it means the issues of our region will continue to be ignored and we will continue to suffer funding cuts. anderson has been axed from the cabinet entirely which i think is crummy since he has been one of the better fisheries and environment ministers in the last couple of decades. john reynolds (one of the conservative morons) immediately commented that this will be a boon to the going forward of oil and gas exploration in the province, especially with emerson being named minister of industry. i can see where this is going… monies being cut from hatcheries to fund ceaa reviews for the oil and gas industry, etc. not to mention the detrimental effect on stocks and habitat concerns and the horrendous worker-safety records of offshore oil and gas operations internationally. horrid!
there is a terrible smell in my corner of the office today, that has come and gone over the past few weeks. we have speculated that it is a result of the composting and some air exchange through the vents above us, but have not been able to locate the problem as of yet. my co-worker decided to phone again today to discuss with our maintenace firm the problem – and she was given a 1-800 number in montreal to contact… that’s right folks – to have a problem in our building on the west coast rectified, we must phone montreal first and have them route the info rather than just contacting our guys in the building directly. you can see clearly that your tax-dollars are being well-spent by this centralization of building management.
whee bureaucracy….
but on more important matters, i am extremely happy about getting the house in robert’s creek. i will try to take photos if i go up there anytime soon and post them here – but i think i will be moving august 28th/29th or thereabouts. now i need to get onto packing and hiring movers and so forth which is all a little overwhelming. money will be a little tight as well since i’m not getting the eviction money from my landlord…. but i reworked my finances and it means dipping into my house-fund a little bit in the short term and then paying it back over the next couple of months.
today is sailing along and i am quite happy about the news of this morning. i can now pack with a purpose, it doesn’t seem so bleak.
an update
i got the place in robert’s creek!
and
my apartment didn’t sell at the last minute.
this means that i have a new place to live as of september 1st, but won’t be getting the eviction money since I’m not technically evicted.
but i’m moving anyways. more update later.
relaxed and wild from the forest
so the past couple of days i have been on the sunshine coast, which ended up being a last-minute trip but a fruitful one.
saturday, when i got home from my strike training course, there was a message from a place i had called to view in robert’s creek, asking that i come to see it on sunday afternoon. i called the woman (marianna) back and scheduled that, which kiboshed my plans to go camp at lightning lake in manning park… but i decided to salvage my camping plans on the coast instead.
so first thing sunday, i took a ferry over to the coast and spent an hour sunning myself on the beach at robert’s creek and then went up the road to make my appointment. the house is quite nice, and a lot of space for me (it’s two bedrooms with a smallish den which would make a good sewing/craft area) and lots of storage, with a large yard and a wood-stove…. exactly what i am looking for, and right on robert’s creek road! the couple who are renting it are two women with an 18-month old daughter named hannah – very nice family – and they are moving back to vancouver temporarily due to work/life balance issues, but plan to use a cottage on the property on weekends. we hit it off quite well, and they had a couple of other people to show it to but said they would check my references and let me know in the next day or so. i’m keeping my fingers crossed as my moving stress would be greatly alleviated.
today is the day the closing is supposed to happen on my apartment – i emailed the realtor to see if i could get any news about whether the sale is going to go through or not – but haven’t heard back. that means i’m waiting on two things – to find out when i’m evicted, and also if i got the house in the creek. being the impatient sort, this has the potential to trigger all sorts of anxiety, but i’m pretty relaxed from the trip at the moment.
after my house-viewing, i drove up to smuggler’s cove and hiked in a little ways to the campground there which consists of 3 marked camping spots and a pit toilet. the hike in is little more than a stroll at 1.5 km – but my desire was to spend some time with just me, and get a sleep out in the woods, and i figured i might as well do that since i was on the coast already.
despite the number of day-hikers in the area it turned out to be a good plan as it served my need for outdoor relaxation.
i got there and set up, then hiked around for awhile…. laid on a hot rock for two hours in the intermittent sun, made dinner, and then went for a nude swim in the early evening – there’s something about swimming unclothed that wakes up the wild critter in me – reminds me that as a member of this species i belong in the wild, uncaged and awakened to the natural pleasures so denied in urban existence….
i spent the rest of the evening light lying under a tree in a small glade reading a book. i slept well waking only to the slight sounds in the forest as the night passed over me.
this morning i got up and did the same thing in reverse (went for a swim, ate and then hiked around some more before returning to my car). on my way out, i called up my friend david and had a spontaneous lunch at the gumboot before hitting the ferry.
my internal need for wild-solace was at least partly met (though marred by other human presence). i really am hoping to get this house so that i can devote the rest of my summer to simply packing, working, and getting out of town when the urge hits, rather than having to go back and forth to the coast on the house-hunt.
so here i will sign off – relaxed and darkened from the sun – anticipating the next news coming my way…..
(PS – to those of you who have recently commented on how much you like this blog – thanks! it really means lots to me that y’all find this a useful reference to my life – cause i sure do…..)
Red Cedar 