Category Archives: life

real world events

Spring Showers

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Woke up this week to a winter wonderland – snowed all night and all day.
The world made new. Again.

A mouse lives near the entrance to the neighbourhood park. In the fresh snow on the remaining snowbanks she is busy tunnelling; across the bank, popping up and burrowing down again, leaving tiny holes in the snow. The fresh snow so soft and shallow her tunnel falling in behind her, leaving a path of churned up snow. Terminating at the heart of a leafless bush, stems offering protection from avidly curious snouts of canine folk passers-by.

A Blue Jay calls in the morning from the oak tree in a low buzzing rattle, ending in a middle-pitched *click* – a mating call?

 

Feels like spring!

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Above freezing this week, snowbanks dissolving into icy sidewalk lakes, the air doesn’t hurt my face when I step out the door… glimpse of springtime!

Tracks around home

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Around home, besides the plethora of bootprints, there are dog (canine accompanying bootprint); coyote (canine not accompanying bootprint!); squirrel & hare a-plenty, to my dog’s delight; magpie, chickadee and other small seed-eaters; occasional mouse; and, least commonly, so most interestingly, striped skunk.

I am still surprised when the tracks lead boldly right up a front walk, though of course, near the human-dens are where the goods are, and the scavenger-types’ reason for frequenting the area.

Last week we had a light snowfall, which made a perfect blank canvass for spying on the abundant nightlife (of the furry variety) in the neighbourhood. A night-time skunk prowler came from the central park, trotted right up a neighbour’s front walk, and came out the back into the alley. My new teacher Mark* told me that skunks — in open spaces and slow to a walk to check things out under cover, which is just what this fellow had done.

That same morning a track of a nighttime cat came up our front walk, followed along between our front snowbank and house, into the backyard. The next morning, a lone canine print followed the same path up the walk and along the snowbank, but walking over the top of the bank instead of stealthily behind it – right outside the window where I slept, oblivious to the nighttime highway the front yard had become.

*Elbroch, Mammal Tracks and Sign: A Guide to North American Species

Owl

A pale owl flapped to the top of a spruce tree in the park this morning, and sat there, stone still. Very rare sighting.

Eleven crows flying northward, chatting. (close attention to their silhouettes this time, plus it’s lighter now for morning walks – yay (solar) spring! – definitely blunt-tailed, smooth ruffed crows, not V-tailed craggy ravens.)

> It’s somewhat warmer today, after a week of chill-you-to-the-bone, and lots of deep snow remains everywhere.

Tracking reinspired

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One of my childhood favourites was Mark Trail’s Book of Animal Tracks, a book brought into the household collection from one of my parent’s childhood bookshelves. (As a child I often pondered the surprising appropriateness of the author’s name – a penname? Or the inevitable outdoorsman career choice with a name like that, like lawyers with the surname Law? To my disappointment I discovered recently the solution to that puzzle –  this childhood figure’s perfect name is due to his fictional status.)

It was a delight to find a track around the farm and to take its features back to Mark Trail’s little illustrated book to play the matching game. A similar joy that birdwatchers (or listeners) find in identifying a bird call.

There’s something special about encountering wild animal signs first-hand. It’s a connection, tangible proof of asynchronously shared space with these often unseen near-neighbours.

Cross country skiing around Jasper earlier this winter I encountered several intriguing trails that rekindled my interest in track mastery. On the first afternoon’s trip we cut our own fresh trail, then on the 2nd morning when we followed it again, an interesting fresh track revealed that an animal had frolicked around the base of a tree. Backtracking, I saw it had come from the direction we had come the previous day. The trail shortly disappeared into thin air. I peered to the near and far side of our ski trail – a blank slate of snow – only to discover that the cheeky creature had trotted in right up our own ski trail: hidden its tracks in ours. We also spotted some Whitetail deer feeding on grass, and, as they thoughtfully vacated on our approach, we were able to look at their digs. Some stand-offish elk studied us from behind the trees, and I was delighted to later come across the field of snow they waded through to arrive there.

Whitetail Deer
Deer dig
The Elk Themselves
Elk wade
Elk print
Track within our trail

Obviously, track photography is another skill I can work on! It’s tough!

In Jasper I acquired 2 remote teachers: I discovered two excellent tracking handbooks to be my lesson books – Mammal Tracks & Sign: A Guide to North American Species, by Mark Elbroch, and Tracking & The Art of Seeing: How to Read Animal Tracks and Sign, by Paul Rezendes – carefully selected for stock at the Friends of Jasper shop. Of course, first-hand mentorship is best for these kinds of lessons, but it’s a start.

Of course I am a beginner and a dabbler yet – to really become adept I have a long road ahead. Learning the appearance of a particular kind of animal’s track is one thing, but the layer upon layer of complexity makes it a lifetime’s study! Animal behavior – what attracts and repels each species; why they move and how; what speeds do they travel and what gaits do they use – which produces variation in the track arrangement and print registry. That old book of Mark’s initiated me, but I’ve got a long way to go!

Imbolg, the beginning

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Imbolg can be considered the beginning of the annual cycle, inasmuch as a cycle has a beginning or an ending.

The sabbats equally divide the year into eight parts: the points of longest and shortest daylight, and the midway points of equal day & night mark the four quarters, and then the midpoint between each of these make up the four cross-quarters.

They are eight small, even stitches in time which serve as ideal points to step aside, out of the path of regular life, and reflect. These points have also been connected to the human story writ large, the one you have to step back to get the big picture of – beginnings, growth, wisdom, endings – happening over and over again throughout each lifetime. While the eight points highlight the cycles in nature, they also reflect the cycles we experience in life – stitches connecting our concrete reality with abstract reality.

All of this by way of exploring, why am I coming to you, snow piled high outside, calling it a seasonal beginning!?

We are poised mid-way between two big flashy sun-points: shortest day and equal day-night, Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. In fact, I might expect Spring Equinox, when the idea of SPRING is celebrated (if not the reality yet, on the cold, frozen northern prairie!), to be “the beginning,” but the image of spring is one of lush, verdant shoots, bright flowers in bloom – life already in full swing, springing into action under the warmth and light of the sun. The real beginning is quiet, below the surface: the planted seed, the waiting bulb. Winter followed by Spring – the seasons now poised on the brink of that invigorating, inevitable roll into warmth and growth and abundant daylight.

It is the waiting in the wings time before Spring dances onto centre stage for the first act.

Imbolg translates as “in the belly” – womb-time, which feels right for this season – still the deep heart of winter, time of hibernation, the ground hard and unchanging, but holding within it the roots and bulbs of life, potential in stasis, waiting for the right time for growth and emergence. A time of candles, symbol of inspiration (not to mention a seasonally welcome activity!), this particular stopping point in the path can be devoted to reflections on inspiration, attentiveness to new ideas forming, making mental space to allow awareness of creative (ad)ventures lurking beneath the surface of conscious, day-to-day living. Inspiration – the very earliest stage of new growth in our lives.

I was reminded today that Chinese New Year, also this weekend, is really Spring Festival, also connected to sun and moon cycles, and that many cultures have a celebration at this time. I’m curious to learn more about the global connections in these celebrations. What fascinates me, too, is the continuity from centuries past of the Chinese celebration. What does a tradition look like that has had that long to steep, continued unbroken, evolving through the ages into modern times? I’m intrigued to learn more…

 

Five black silhouettes sail overhead under the morning moonlight, croaking in raspy voices to one another, revealing themselves as crows.

Perhaps they wandered over from campus, or are migrating north in the unusually warm weather. This neighbourhood belongs to the magpie clan; crows, especially such deep voiced ones, aren’t common here, though I love to hear them.