This evening I went for a nice run down Pereau Road and then up a bit of Hubbard Mountain Road. It was a bit too humid for my prairie bones, so I was happy to stop and walk a bit when I reached my turn around point at the old Pereaux (when did the word lose its 'x' around here, I am left wondering...)cemetery. I love small, old (and this one goes back to 1775!), rural cemeteries. They are eloquent in what they say about community and belonging. There are stories on headstones that tell of immigrants from Europe who lived a hard, farming life and died in middle age. Other stories of babies or young adults who died too soon, leaving me wondering how. There's the old story of class disntinction played out on grave markers ranging from elaborate to simple and small, to not there at all. There are the names of wives (mostly wives) with their birth date inscribed, but no death date yet; the ongoing stories of their widowhood. And stories of grieving written in plastic flowers and in the inscriptions themselves - all the variations of "Gone but not forgotten". So many people, so many lives, all there in such an articulate quiet.
These small cemetaries are so much the same wherever you go. They always have an honest beauty about them. And they make me want to be from a small community, so that I'd know my body, after death, would find a home in this kind of simple and familiar soil. The cemetery would be small enough to take in from one vantage point, located not too near a busy road, there would be birds in the trees, and some neighbour the one who volunteers to mow the grass (even if it's not every week, or even every month!).
I, of course, don't live in such a place. And at the moment, after six months of travel (even with nearly two months in and around Calgary), I feel quite removed from my home and my community.
In so many ways travel is the ultimate in selfishness. I think about how it requires great resources (of fuel - gasoline, or jet or otherwise, as well as of personal energy), and how it removes the traveler from their home community where the most opportunities for interconnectedness or generosity lie. I have been contemplating the luxury and the selfishness of this year.
But I have also been examining the benefits we are all gaining from this trip. The many ways the four of us are closer than we were when we left Calgary in January; the relaxed good cheer we have for each other most of the time now. The rich, rich store of memories we are all building - some of them sensory (the smell of a BC forest in the rain, the feel of a wet sleeping bag, the taste of freshly caught fish, the experience of feeling the water of an outgoing tide become slack around your ankles and then the sensation of it turning and moving the other way!), some of them intelletual (all we learned about the life-cycles of salmon, the ecologies of Canada, the history of Old Quebec, the travel routes of the voyageurs, how to close a real estate deal while driving on the Trans-Canada), some of them interpersonal (how wonderful it is to share life with friends and family in THEIR places - Lisa and Chase in Alert Bay, the Hagreen-Leblonds in Victoria, Jeff and Yin and Awen, and Ken in Vancouver, Joan and David out here).
Mostly for me, the biggest opportunity for learning is coming through the chance to homeschool (or 'unschool') with Emma and Nathan. This primarily means learning to calm my mind and open myself to a gentle flow of living. To let go of worry and doubt. To enjoy!
Lately the things I've been enjoying most are:
- The taste of fresh strawberries, raspberries and garden peas.
- Nathan's made-up riddles and puns.
- Emma's deep calm. And the way she gallops down the long beach.
- Chris' face. And hands. And mind.
- Joan's generosity - the windows in the bedroom of her yellow house, her offers to babysit, her laughter, her curried maple chicken....
- David's piratey and gardeny ways with the kids.
- Bald eagles as they fly over the ocean.
- Nova Scotia's incredible recycling and composting programs.
- Gaspereau Press books - they are printed and bound so artfully.
- Wading and swimming in Lumsden Pond.
- Filling water bottles at the Gaspereau spring.
- Running. Running fast. Running far. Running even when it's HOT and I have to go slow and not far.
- Thinking about my Dad, my Mom, my sister, my Grandma Severson, Heidi, Liz, Robyn, Ken, Vara and Lisa. Although too much of this makes me a bit heartsick and then I stop enjoying myself...
- Looking at pictures from the past six months. Especially the ones from Tofino, Writing-on-Stone, Alert Bay, and from our drive across the country.
- The glitter of full-moon moonlight on the water
- Falling asleep with a coolish breeze coming in the window, the way it brings the sound of that little waterfall across the road.
Life lived like a prayer of sensuality and gladness. That's what I'd like mine to be.
J.
The sky over Nelson Lake, Saskatchewan. July 11, '09
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