Autumn 2019: The Mysteries of Human Love
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 […]
Midsummer 2019: Fire and Flower
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), […]
Spring Equinox 2019: Mud, Water and Light
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 […]
The Breath of Winter: Solstice Eve 2018
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 […]
Fall Equinox 2018: The Stillpoint
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. […]
Summer Solstice 2018: Consider the Lilies
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 […]
Spring Equinox 2018: Here for good
Recently someone new to Alberta asked me, “When does the snow stop?” really meaning to ask, “When does spring come?” “It comes and it goes,” I replied. “And then suddenly it’s here for good.” My mom left a message on my phone a couple of weeks ago: “It’s running out there! You can hear the […]
Winter Solstice 2017: Darkness and Light
The last few years I’ve gotten into the habit of putting out photographs in my living room of those near me who have died during the year. Their faces greet me each day as I go about my morning yoga; they smile at me every evening on my return from work. I leave them out […]
Fall Equinox 2017: Music and Prophecies
I have an image of my child self that I often call to mind. I am probably 10 or 11 years old; it is the 1960s. I am sitting between our family kitchen and living room, my back against the door jamb, my knees pulled up in front of me, listening to the radio that […]
Summer 2017: Healing Leaves 150
And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. Rev. 22:2 A few weeks ago on a CBC Ideas podcast, How Art Shapes History, the moderator asked a panel of artists: What makes a nation? Christi Belcourt, a Michif (Métis) visual artist, pointed out that this land we call Canada is […]
The Hope of Spring 2017
Coming home on the bus in the middle of February, deep in the last cold snap of winter, I sat beside an elderly woman who swore she could smell the Athabasca Glacier, all the way from the Columbia Icefields. She could smell it on the west wind, that very day. She had been there once. […]
Midwinter Passage 2016
Some mornings on my walk to work, if the traffic lights are right, I take a shortcut through the Quarters up The Armature pedestrian mall. When I cross over 103A Avenue at 96th Street, I pass two bronze figures on either side of the mall, I sometimes call The Coyote Men.+ You might call them […]
Fall Equinox 2016
Enjoy the trees blowing in the wind while reading a book on the couch, my favorite thing. Those were the parting words of the owner who last lived in my condo. I too enjoy the sound of the leaves in the wind. I notice them more in the fall, maybe because the leaves are crisper […]
Midsummer’s Eve 2016
On my route along 92nd street, past the Mother Teresa School, under the elm clad arches of 104th Avenue, along the wild gardens of Boyle Street plaza, the sunken hidden garden by the courthouse, through the piazza fronting city hall. Past the robin’s urgent mating yodel, the see-sawed whistle of the house finch, the white-throated […]
Spring Equinox 2016
January 23rd I came home from my usual Saturday morning run to the Downtown Farmer’s Market to commotion in the front lobby of my condo complex. Water was ankle deep on the main floor; someone was trying to find the key to the utility room so that we could turn the water off. We didn’t […]
Winter Solstice 2015
One endearment of this season, is how it lays bare to view all that is hidden. The sunken garden I pass in the centre of Edmonton that most would never see in summer, shrouded as it is in pine, basswood, and maple, now stands open to the light. The night sky stands just as revealed. […]
Fall Migration 2015
When I was in Banff this August, every afternoon about three o’clock, the birds seemed to crash from the skies to feed in the woods near the studio where I was writing. About an hour later they would lift off again. Small birds most of them, some quite oddly located but that’s how it is […]
Summer Solstice 2015
I find myself watching the trees this year, the trees in the courtyard where I live, the trees along the streets and avenues of the City, the trees in the river valley, wild and feral, native and planted. One evening while cooking my supper, I take down my binoculars and look for the baby robin […]
Spring Solstice 2015
This time of year The sun rising on my walk to work. Skipping through puddles. Me slip-sliding, sometimes tripping. The streets running with water. The river breaking up, the swans low overhead. The souls. In a hospital room somewhere, someone is dying. Snow storm and robin song. It’s always the same metamorphosis. I pick my […]
Brighid’s Wheel: The Perpetual Fire
This past Wednesday I saw my doctor for my annual physical. Last year at this time my blood pressure was 80/60. I had been feeling the fatigue for months and would for many more. This January my blood pressure was back to 104/72, normal for me. I had always had low blood pressure, but never […]
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