18 March

Spring Equinox 2024: The Thing with Feathers

Posted in Books, Nature, Seasonal Messages

You know how Bell has those billboards every January that say “Let’s talk?” That’s what this blog might be titled. Only it’s not only about the mental health and grief of the individual I want to speak, but the collective. I’ve been thinking about the word “depression” lately, from my own experiences of grief and those […]

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20 December

Winter Solstice 2023: Green Point

Posted in Food, Nature, Photos, Seasonal Messages, Travel
Winter Solstice 2023: Green Point

Green Point, Newfoundland and Labrador

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22 September

Fall Equinox 2023: Walking the River

Posted in Nature, News, Photos, Seasonal Messages

  Last weekend I walked part of the Edmonton Camino, a five-day walk through the city’s North Saskatchewan River valley, from Devon (where the trail is still unfinished) to Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. The Cree have a name for this river, Kisiskâciwanisîpiy or Swift Flowing River and the trails that accompany it, Amisko Wacîw Mêskanaw, meaning […]

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20 June

Summer Solstice 2023: Wild Fire

Posted in Art, Books, Nature, News, Seasonal Messages

In early May when the smoke was so heavy over Edmonton, the air quality at 10 or 10+ for days, I was weighted by the reality. I stayed inside, used the gym, kept my windows closed. Waited for respite. Rains came but so did high temperatures. And then when wildfires gradually spread across the country […]

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19 March

Spring Equinox 2023: The Pull

Posted in Art, Books, Nature, Seasonal Messages

I was out walking on Saturday on the way to the grocery store, lost in thought, when I came alongside a young man (who from the looks of it was homeless), stopped for a smoke. He was excited, watching something above him. “Look at this!” I heard it first, in the poplars. The magpies talking […]

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21 September

Fall Equinox 2022: Harvest Moon

Posted in Food, Music, Nature, Seasonal Messages

Saturday, September 10th, just after 3 o’clock I got a call from my tailor, Kim. I’d left a couple of things for hemming. She was closing early. “We have a celebration tonight,” she told me. There had been some Chinatown festivities at the Farmer’s Market that day, with dragons and lions dancing in the streets, […]

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20 June

Summer Solstice 2022: Bridging Time, Place and Being

Posted in Art, Music, Nature, Seasonal Messages, Travel

Merriam Webster has two definitions for the word bridge. Bridge as structure and bridge as a time, place or way to connect or transition. Not here or there. Not now or then. In between. A co-worker told me she walks the High Level Bridge home every Friday from the office. It’s her way of marking […]

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19 March

Spring Equinox 2022: Infectious and Muddy

Posted in Art, Nature

I have been thinking for weeks, How to speak of spring in the face of war, of death? How to speak of spring in the face of another migration, a mass migration of almost three million Ukrainians and counting. Where the birds themselves are likely changing course? I live in a neighbourhood in Edmonton that […]

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20 December

Winter Solstice 2021: A Pot of Green Lentils

Posted in Books, Food, Nature, News

As I set out to write this midwinter reflection, I cook a pot of lentils. (This is our earth.) Cooking my way to clarity. Or as Montreal writing friend Kate Henderson said in her Christmas card to me the other day, “writing” these days “takes the form of thinking.” Thinking. Cooking. Reading. Listening. I’ve been […]

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19 March

Spring Equinox 2021: A doodle on the balance point

Posted in Nature, News, Reflections, Seasonal Messages, Travel

This week my yoga teacher said, Think about your relationship with time… and what occurred to me in these COVID times is to wonder at our relationship with place, how relationships need to meet in real place as much as real time, something the online meeting has yet to master, because as humans everything we […]

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20 December

Winter Solstice 2020: A Deepening

Posted in Nature, News, Reflections, Seasonal Messages

Growing up I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of going to bed at night. I was afraid of going down into the corners of the basement in the middle of the day, where I would often get sent to fetch things. Mostly I was afraid of the unknown. What I might find […]

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21 September

Fall Equinox 2020: The Birds Are Sentinels

Posted in Nature, News, Reflections, Seasonal Messages, Travel

The last couple of days walking by the river, I’ve run across a flock of robins, country robins, judging from the way they spook on seeing me. Maybe they’ll be there tomorrow; maybe they’ll be gone. It’s one of their migration strategies, to stop and refuel every so often. Most migrating birds fly at night. […]

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19 June

Summer Solstice 2020: The Fullness

Posted in Art, Books, Music, Nature, News, Reflections, Seasonal Messages

COVID-19. One word with so many contradictions: death, innovation, anger, selflessness, anxiety, adaptation, depression, creativity. The fullness of life! To date, at least 8,457,305 infections; 453,882 deaths. We hear the counts every night like reports from a war zone. We know it is not gone. The financial fall-out we haven’t begun to comprehend. The isolation […]

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20 December

Winter Solstice 2019: Death and Life

Posted in Art, Nature, Photos, Seasonal Messages, Travel

There are always thresholds to cross. And there are always choices to make. Every season opens a door. I don’t think it’s a contradiction that people mark midwinter as a major anniversary of loss as well as a time of gratitude. Winter solstice holds both death and life for us. When I was in Malta […]

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22 September

Autumn 2019: The Mysteries of Human Love

Posted in Nature, Photos, Seasonal Messages, Travel

As I harvest my year this autumn, the experience that stands out for me most is my visit to the Valle dei Templi at Agrigento in Sicily in the spring. Agrigento is an ancient pilgrimage site, at more than 2000 acres (3+ sections of land) probably the largest outside of Athens in Greek antiquity. A […]

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20 June

Midsummer 2019: Fire and Flower

Posted in Nature, News, Seasonal Messages

Fire is the marker of summer. Fire and flower. All over Europe, people still light bonfires on the eve of Summer Solstice or the eve of St. John the Baptist’s feast: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Estonia, Ukraine, Croatia, Austria, Spain, Portugal and even here in Canada, in Quebec. St. John, Jean Baptiste, Jonsmessa (Jons mass), […]

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19 March

Spring Equinox 2019: Mud, Water and Light

Posted in Art, Nature, News, Seasonal Messages

Every creation story I know starts with water and mud, spring no different. Slippery footing, sudden ponds, dirt in snow banks, grit in the street and a warm wind. The night freezes and the day thaws. For a couple of months it’s a see-saw, wild ride, back and forth, up and down the thermometer. It’s […]

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20 December

The Breath of Winter: Solstice Eve 2018

Posted in Nature, Reflections, Seasonal Messages

Many years ago now, around this time of year, I came down with a bad case of bronchitis. My lungs were not the same afterwards. I was diagnosed with asthma. About 10 years ago, I started having more and more reactions to the medications. In 2009 I went for acupuncture. More than a year into […]

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22 September

Fall Equinox 2018: The Stillpoint

Posted in Nature, News, Reflections, Seasonal Messages

I walk to work every day, zig-zagging, cross-stepping as-the-crow-flies, in a beeline from my place in Boyle Street, on through downtown Edmonton. This year some of the route has changed as my own life has changed. Work has moved and my role with it; I have to walk a little farther than I used to. […]

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20 June

Summer Solstice 2018: Consider the Lilies

Posted in Nature, News, Seasonal Messages

One rainy day a couple of weeks ago, I was standing at the corner of 100th Street and 102nd Avenue with the usual students, professionals (me included) and “people without place” waiting for the light to change. I had my big umbrella with me, the one I like to use for heavy rain because it […]

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