I took down a poplar that was sick at the core. Carpenter ants were nesting and making a general go of it at the base of the trunk and had constricted sap flow. The tree was drying and dying and, unlike the ants, would not last many more seasons. I notched the tree’s north side close to its natural lean, then one cut on the south side and it collapsed—gratefully I thought—along my intended path.

I built a fire, got up a sufficient base of heat and gave the branches, top, and decaying pieces to the flames. The rest I cut into splitting lengths and stacked between the trunks of two trees.

I spent the rest of the day cutting grass, picking wild strawberries, lying on my back, watching squirrels, tending my fire, and making peace with a pair of agitated northern goshawks whose territory I had obviously invaded. They flew to nearby trees and squawked at me at from above. After an hour or so they received me, or dismissed me—I was fine either way.

My education is here in the woods. I meet myself with the aid of hawk and squirrel, rain and woods, sun and blossom.

For years, I’ve had a notion to take pictures of the farm site standing solitary and sad—house, long weathered, brown-grey, grand enough in its time, a stone foundation in the foreground, a shed to the west—framed by a stand of poplars.

The notion finally worked its way up to action, partly because I was with my brother-in-law Fred, who has an affinity and an eye for a camera-ready scene. But there was a bonus.

Even before we step out of the car we see the birds. Bigger than ravens, black, pink-red neck and head, perched on the ridge of the house. Turkey vultures. Fitting for the scene.

I sense their agitation as we cross the ditch, and before we get any closer, 150 meters perhaps, they open their wings, pitch forward and climb up over the poplars, circle and soar south—soar beautifully.

When we get home I look them up and learn that this farmstead would be at the northern edge of their nesting habitat, and that spotting them in Alberta is “semi-rare”. I also learn that Turkey Vultures like to nest in abandoned buildings, away from prying human eyes. "If available, the preferred site is on the second floor." Well, me too. I sense a connection.

Facebook photo album

…On listening to Dana Wylie’s new CD, Something’s Going to Happen Here, especially the song, If you need to.

Make sure you go to Dana’s CD release party, June 26, at Holy Trinity, Edmonton.

Craig Larsen believes in the simple counter-cultural act of growing and sharing your own food—in this case, haskap, an edible blue honeysuckle.

Craig is willing to share these plants at very little cost. All he asks is that anyone who grows haskap is also willing to share 10 to 20 percent of the harvest with the poor.

If you are interested in helping him disseminate the little purple berry into local food markets as quickly and as cheaply as possible please visit his site; in particular read the sidebar.

Craig, you’ll discover, is also willing to share his knowledge. Read about this fit-for-Canada plant with its delicious and highly nutritious fruit—and how you can care for the earth and her communities.

I tilt holding the bough and like the hands on a clock I turn on its axis. Centred like this, I scan upward and watch the the way the afternoon slant of sunlight draws out the dappled white from surrounding aspen. And how the white dyes the nearby sky deep blue like laundry. At this moment, it’s as though I have to keep myself from falling upward into the still point of bark and sky and breath. As though it’s time’s turn to reach me.

Canada geese have sounded their arrival. I mark the date. It’s early but perhaps open water can be found on the edges of Lac Ste Anne or Sandy Lake or Lac La Nonne. But changing weather patterns have altered migratory paths. These geese may stay or fly far north.

Then a ruckus. A Northern goshawk. Now two. One chases the other through 40 ft poplars, the first lands high and breaks off a dead branch which carelessly careens its way to the snow below. These raptors, magnificent, like the mysterium tremendum alert the blood and raise the hair on my skin. The squirrel that’s left a small midden on the cabin step would do well to stay below until the shadow passes.

I turn southwest and trace the sharp staccato coming from the head of a Downy woodpecker. She’s far away but her drumming is somewhere inside me. Then I catch a speck of red and black as she flies me blind into the descending sun.

In this church north of latitude 53 and west of longitude 114, just here at this cross, I coax my wife to read me poetry while I stoop and poke at the fire. She reads lines from Wendell Berry: I stand and wait for light / to open the dark of night. I stand and wait for prayer / to find me here.

Here, I’m found, at the place where an elm stave is planted in the thawing earth. Here is the axis mundi. Here is the earth’s navel where gods, like Homing pigeons, slip in and out with prayers tied to their legs.

Trevor Herriot brings the prairie and its sky to life, and then considers the harm inflicted by our ongoing colonizing ways. He shows how we’ve hobnailed our way here–by accident and design, in ignorance and through the expedience of technique. And how, as a result, suitable habitat for the birds of the Great Plains is disappearing. No doubt this disappearance will never make the Kyoto and Copenhagen things-to-ameliorate list. But the greater tragedy is that the ravages of our development-at-any-cost has also been largely ignored by those of us reared on the prairies. In this sense the great value of Herriot’s book is the connection it persuasively traces from the fate of palm-size brown birds and the native grassland that sustains them, to the  health and well-being of our own bodies and souls.  

Grass, Sky, Song is also a book of beauty. Through Trevor Herriot’s eyes, the grassland, and the sky that mediates the sun, through which small winged creatures make their passage and sing their mystery, reveal a shikinah presence. To read this book is to grow a certain peripheral vision–it is to be given sight for the holy in the margins.

It is a book of vision and hope. There is forgiveness in the flight-songs of small buff-coloured birds. There is, we find, promise in the name meadowlark. There is, we discover, a restorative power in the grass and sky, a resiliency that while beaten has not snapped.

But there lies a warning here. Hope that is real will not slough off blame, even to obvious targets. It will instead square up to our own complicity as consumers in "achieving security of the food system," and our lazy demand for inexpensive food. Here we are shown a new-old way: how even the choice to eat, not grain-fed, but grass-fed beef and bison, is a step of re-engagement with our prairie environment.

The central nervous system of the Great Plains is badly flayed, but what is not dead, may yet flourish. A renewed sensitivity to place can allow old pathways to reroute themselves revitalizing the vastness of our Plains and receiving back the delicate mystery of song birds.

Grass, Sky, Song honours the least of these–be it a pipit, a tuft of native grass, the click-click of a burrowing owl, a fleeting swirl of mist, the contents of a square yard of air–nothing is overlooked, forgotten or passed by. To live our lives in such a way where the falling of a sparrow does not go unnoticed is to live in concordance with Creation–and so, to build the stabilitas of our society’s soul and body.

Parliament needs to address the dangerous effects of global warming and pass legislation that sets science-based targets. The Climate Change Accountability Act – Bill C-311 – is a good start, and Canadians are watching. We want to see Bill C-311 passed before the world heads to Copenhagen in December.

This, in essence, was the message given Parliament Hill by a hundred or so students and others attending Edmonton’s climate flash mob event. Initiated by Green Peace, the local climate-wake-up-call was one of a couple thousand flash mobs world wide.  

Teryl Berg interviewed by Global TV

Organized by Teryl Berg, and held on the University of Alberta campus, the flash mob ostensibly achieved to keep politician’s feet to the coals. But it was also a reminder for all of us to keep vigilant regarding climate care. This is, after all, a question of justice. 

The meeting in Copenhagen this December can either turn out to be an occasion for posturing and bureaucratism, or it can make significant strides to work for a global climate deal that is, as this event has called for, FAIR AMBITIOUS and BINDING.

Fair – for the poorest countries who did not cause climate change, but are suffering most.

Ambitious – enough to leave a planet safe for us all.

Binding – with real targets that can be legally monitored and enforced.

But don’t stop with one flash mob, continue to keep the pressure on Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Minister of the Environment, Jim Prentice, and Minister of Industry, Tony Clement, to go to Copenhagen and advocate for a FAB treaty.

Go here to read The Gateway’s coverage of the event and Teryl Berg’s interview and comments.

Check here for flash mob wake-up call in the press.

Thank you to photographer Ryan Kelly for covering the event. All pictures by permission of MagnaSona Photography.

Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end
of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun.  -a Psalm

We sat on wet sand beside a cranky ocean. Caught hermit crabs in tide pools before dusk. Decided their makeshift houses gave them their makeshift lives. Then we set them free.

The rain came. A gray dome close as raised hands delivered a torrent that covered our driftwood shelter and pooled around our bedding.

Soaked. Denim stuck to skinny frames, hair in wet ropes falling outside jacket hoods. Someone had a flare, but even with that a fire was impossible and we hugged ourselves under low spruce boughs.

We shared a screw-top bottle of syrupy wine and shivered and watched a streak of dull orange return a reluctant horizon.

The dome lifted leaving a moon-shot mist, illuminating a silver-grey sea. Scattered blue dots flamed through gaping clouds.

We warmed ourselves by running across acres of sand. We jumped toward the surf, scrambled over shaley rock and barnacle covered boulders. We gamed it–and dared each other to find as many rock islands for our feet as we could; we flew farther out over the water–every successful leap becoming a possibility for one more. A body went down on the slick seaweed beside me and I hesitated. The wind was up spraying foam flecks and salt over our wet faces.

The tide surprised us and we needed a different route to make our retreat.

Safe on flat shore rocks we sat on our heels and caught our breath.

That’s when we saw the lights, a continent away, surging up and falling back like notes on a steel guitar. Marking time in troughs and swells. Looming, brooding lights. They kept us company for the night. Life bobbing on the high seas. Hermits on fishing boats.

A warm mid-morning sun bleach-dried our clothes and loosened our limbs and we slept.

The ocean woke us in the afternoon–quiet.

We looked up our tide pools and searched for our hermit crabs. We found some Black-eyes and Hairys living in an array of mollusk carapace’s. Some were on the lookout for new hermitages.

Sometimes you need to change shells–trade up.

Any singular love, focused and deep enough, opens us up to the mystery and wonder of the whole of creation.

Of particular import is this week’s Well, Well, Well, column. (Can you tell yet I’m a fan?) Ah, but especially this week. It’s right up my perambulating alley.

Check it out here. Then grab your scrambling stick and get your butt outside…and promenade, saunter, or just stroll your way to well-ness.

Oh, and here are a few pics of last weeks hike down to Mystic beach. (with Deb, my sis Joanne, & Dan)