Animal's Point of View

"The land is so long and the people traveling in it so few, the curious animals barely notice them from one lifetime to the next. The human beings whose name is Tetsot'ine live here with great care, their feet travelling year after year those paths where the animals can easily avoid them if they want to, or follow, or circle back ahead to watch them with little danger. Therefore, when the first one or two Whites appeared in this country.... "the animals did begin to hear strange noises, bits of shriek and hammer above the wavering roar of river rapids or the steady winds. These were strangers, so different, so blatantly loud the caribou could not help hearing them long before they needed to be smelled, and some animals drifted around to see what made the trees in one place scream and smash that way, the rocks clang. They noticed creatures...standing motionless here and there, abruptly pointing and shrieking, pounding! pounding! scuttling about all day and sometimes into the night as well, when tendrils of bush along the river might spring up suddenly into terrifying flame. And the animals understood then that such brutal hiss and clangour must bring on a winter even colder than usual." A Discovery of Stangers, Rudy Wiebe A story based on true events of the settling of the arctic landscape in the early 19th century.

Reflected Arbutus

Three Angles

Sabbath

Long ago, Israelites were instructed to keep the Sabbath. One day a week they were asked to rest and remember God as Creator. God created for six days and rested on the seventh. Although it became a legalized, burdened and restricted day for many, this was never the intention. It was to remember: God was the one who created.

For Christians, Jesus said the Sabbath was given to people. It wasn’t a day to do or not do certain things. Like the Hebrews, it was a gift. Take one day to remember God and creation and to experience rest.

Now, many don't believe in God and may think there is no reason to give this a second thought. Some might believe the earth just came to be for God-knows why.

Yet, whatever belief we profess, what would happen if all of us stopped once a week, rested and noticed? I mean, really noticed. From the frosted alder leaf to the drifting clouds in the sky. From the warming sun to the covering rain. From the mist-hung night air to the dew-risen morning. The moon as it silks the firs, the wind as it waves the water.

Rest, recognition. Sabbath.

Leave It Behind

The afternoon air was damp as the clouds filled the trees and rested on the ferns below. I stopped on my way home from work to go for a quick run in Goldstream Park. Parking just outside the boundary to avoid fees, I began my run but quickly heard loud, desperate banging. I ran by two guys in a secluded turn-off. I couldn't help but stop and ask what they were doing. They were taking turns with crowbar and hammer to break open a safe having lost the key. "Good luck," I said and meant it. I couldn't imagine how they would get the thing open given the obvious amount of energy they had already expended. I thought I was going for a workout.

I wondered what would happen to the safe once it was finally opened.

They were doing their work in a location where many people come. It's a hidden turn-around off a seldom-used road. People confuse this spot with the dump. Refuse scatters the ground. I've seen couches, mattresses, spent paint cans and pot plants. (Regarding these plants, only the containers with a few stems were left. They might have been worth something otherwise.) I guess it’s an easy place for people to come when they haven’t been taught what to do with their garbage.

Everywhere you go inside the park, the ground is immaculate save for the natural growth. This one spot is immediately outside the park boundary and is seldom cleaned. Park-facility personnel don’t venture beyond the border.

Each time I breathe in this scene of waste in the middle of this unfounded beauty, I am anguished to see trash ornamenting God’s artwork. I come to this particular spot less and less for this reason alone.

My run was nearly over. Running past the turn-off on my way back to the car, I noticed the two guys had driven off. I didn’t stop to look whether or not the safe had been left behind.

I didn’t want to know.

I was cold and wet enough.

Global Warming

Global warming. It's here. Even if it's not an accurate description of what's happening to our environment, it's upon us in the media on a frequent basis. Everyday folks are urged to make personal changes by driving less, recycling, and living more simply. Many leaders in the world are rallying to make changes on a larger scale by reducing carbon gasses. For example, British Columbia recently declared it intends to reduce emissions 20% by 2020.

If the science of environment is accurate, then drastic changes need to occur. Yet, I wonder if we are really going about this in the best way. It seems that the primary force of motivation for change is fear of what is to come. Will this be enough to change people? Will the guy driving the Escalade wake up one day and say, "You know, maybe I shouldn't drive this thing" because he believes the planet is at risk?

I've never found fear alone to be a good motivator.

I bike to work at times, and if my only reason is fear of environmental disaster, it wouldn't be enough to get me on my bike on a rainy day. When I do bike it’s for a number of reasons. Yes, I do think of the environment and my participation in some small way of keeping it clean. I also think of saving money since I'm not using gas. Most importantly, I think of how much I love to be outside. I feel the wind on my face, the rain or sun falling on my back. I hear the stream as it flows through the firs, and I catch glimpses of deer bounding into the alders. This is the stuff that gets me on my bike.

Love and respect of nature is the piece we need to promote more in this effort to stem climate change. Since the industrial revolution, many of us have abandoned sitting by a peaceful river, listening to the birds, or seeing the sunrise over the hills. Things and busyness have taken first place priority. These are matters of the heart, and fear won’t change hearts that have lost touch with the natural world. When more of us recapture what we have lost in the love, deep respect and admiration for the natural world, the beginnings of environmental consciousness have begun.

Early Morning Sun

Moonrise

Sunset

Mt Washington

Murder We Write

"To be convinced of the sanctity of the world, and to be mindful of a human vocation to responsible membership in such a world, must always have been a burden. But it is a burdern that falls with the greatest weight on us humans of the industrial age who have been and are, by any measure, the humans most guilty of desecrating the world and of destroying creation. And we ought to be a little terrified to realize that, for the most part and at least for the time being, we are helplessly guilty. It seems as though industrial humanity has brought about phase two of original sin. We all are now guilty in the murder of creation.

"To Jesus' offer of more abundant life, we have chosen to respond with the economics of extintion.

"How must we live and work so as not to be estranged from God's presence in His work and in all His creatures?"

Wendell Berry, The Way of Ignorance


and I feel the murder for... every plastic-packaged container I open and discard, every unnecessary (and necessary) mile I drive, every piece of overabundance I have and want, each moment of my silence and complacency, each time I fail to notice the beauty around me and my thoughts of thinking our present day Abel is someone else's fault.

Full Moons