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I 40 Otherwise Known as Irene

~ pebblesandclay ~ Leave a comment

There was something wrong. I watched as the cow in the rear slowly hobbled after the others picking her way cautiously across the uneven ground. I turned as she rejoined the herd and continued on my way.

As I crested the hill on my walk the following day and the pasture opened up in front of me, I saw my cow lying by herself under the lone tree in the pasture with the rest of the herd nowhere in sight. I was worried now and made a mental note of her appearance so that I could let the farmer know. I heard myself telling him, “You know, the brown cow with the white face. The one that looks exactly like the other brown cows with white faces.”

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That evening I flagged the farmer down on the road and began relating my sad tales of the cow with the limp. The farmer nodded his head and said he knew. “Yes, I 40.”

“ I 40,” I repeated. Of course.  If I was having trouble identifying a cow in a herd, so would a farmer who had two other herds just like this one. The ear tag solved the problem for him, but not for me. I decided she deserved a proper name and so Irene it is.

Irene’s leg has healed and she has blended back into the herd,  but I have a soft spot for her. As I walk by now with my customary, “Hi Girls,” I have added “and Irene.” We watch out for each other here in the country. That’s just the way it is.

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A Ballet School Comes to Town

~ pebblesandclay ~ 2 Comments

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We went to a fundraiser on the weekend for L’Ecole de Ballet Classique de Sutton. It was held at vineyard not far from here with a real chateau and vines cascading down a terraced mountainside.

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The scenery aside, the real story here is that people in this small, rural town have the opportunity to have a classical ballet experience. People in cities and larger urban centres have always had access, but it is much rarer in small towns which makes it all the more special.

Anastasia from Siberia is the force behind this school. She is beautiful and has standards.  Her dancers rise to meet these standards. She is raising money for the school to perform The Nutcracker this Christmas. The community has rallied behind her and the artists and seamstresses have created professional level backdrops and costumes. It will be magic.

This got me thinking about another small town not far from here that also had the luck of having a teacher from the National Ballet of Canada come to town to give lessons. I rummaged through our old photo albums to find this picture of me circa 1960 at ballet school. Scan 2

The  lessons were held in a masonic lodge with the requisite creaky wood floors. We had our own ballet pinafores and proper ballet shoes. We learned the positions, did some barre work, and practiced routines.

I wasn’t a particularly talented ballerina but that didn’t matter. The whole experience was awesome. I loved being in the presence of my teacher with her pink tights and well worn shoes. She was the first woman I had met who wholly occupied her body. It was a world away from anything else I had known or experienced up until that point. And that is exactly why having opportunities like this are so important.

It wasn’t something I pursued after the lessons ended, but my neighbour across the road did find her calling and drove into Montreal to take lessons at the National Ballet School well into her late teens.

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As I left that evening, I couldn’t help but wonder if one of these small town girls might be a future ballerina because a ballet school came to town.

What’s On Your Summer Reading List?

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IMG_2493.JPGConfession: I read all the time but in the last number of years I have found I rarely read novels. The last novel I read was The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain and that was on vacation and it was very short. I read news and op ed pieces online and follow lots of writer’s blogs, but I don’t often make my way through an entire novel. Oh, I have good intentions. I can’t tell you the number of great books I have started lately, only to put them down part way through. I’m not sure what happens, but I seem to lose interest at some point or get busy with other things I’d rather be doing. When I do have quiet time I am more likely to fill it with, well, being quiet.

All of this to say, I always have a pile of books that I am drawn to read sitting on the coffee table or waiting hopefully at my bedside. I thought I’d share with you some of my latest, might read someday books.

IMG_2486.JPGThe Hidden Life of Trees
Peter Wohlleben

This book is at the top of the pile for two reasons. In a few weeks we will be flying to London to visit my daughter and her children. They live very close to Kew Gardens and we spend most days there when we are visiting. Kew Gardens, officially known as Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew, is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Kew has over 14,000 trees including rare and ancient varieties. I always feel as if I am entering a cathedral when I enter the gardens and I know it’s because of the trees. My second reason for wanting to read this book is that we bought the land next door to us last fall. It is 15 acres of mixed forest. I walk on this land almost every day and the words on the book jacket promise that after I read this book a walk in the woods will never be the same again.

IMG_2491.JPGMushrooms of Northeast North America
George Barron

Except for morels and chanterelles, I have not been a mushroom picker. I think its mostly because of feeling overwhelmed by the mushroom identification books that we bought when we first decided to live in the country. They all seemed complicated and involved gathering spore samples amongst other things. That, coupled with my fear of happening upon a mushroom that might cause stomach upset or worse, dampened my interest in exploring the mushrooms that grow so abundantly in our woods. My interest in mushrooms has been revived, however, and this book has great pictures and an understandable way of indexing them. I’m looking forward to spending the summer learning as much as I can and this book feels like a good start.

IMG_2477.JPGAnam Cara
A Book of Celtic Wisdom
John O’Donohue

Deepak Chopra writes on the cover, “Anam Cara is a rare synthesis of philosophy, poetry, and spirituality. This work will have a powerful and life transforming experience for those who read it.” It sounds right up my alley. I am stuck on the prologue at the moment, so I am not sure how that bodes for me reading the rest of the book.

IMG_2494.JPGThe Art of Memoir
Mary Karr

This book I am doing quite well with as you might be able to see by the curling cover from reading it in the bath and dragging it with me to places where I think I might have the opportunity to read. I have been reading this book since January and am on page 155. I am really quite enjoying this book. It is insightful and well written and  full of good advice. For instance, I learned that if you are going to change someone’s name in a memoir, tell the story using the real name and go back and change all name references  after you’re finished. The story will have much more authenticity and power if you use the real name in your initial writing.

What books are on your summer reading list?  Please feel free to let us know in the comments.

Ten Things I’ve Learned In the First Three Months of Blogging

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I’ve learned that:

  1. The people at WordPress are very, very smart. Something went wrong on the third or fourth post I made: pictures that I had embedded into the blog began to duplicate themselves. Luckily, help was just a few taps on the keyboard away. I had the above mentioned very smart person stumped for a few minutes but not for long.
  2. Taking an online blogging course is worth the time and money. The six week course I took was just right for me. It walked me through startup to the finer skills of improving and maintaining an online presence. I also loved the private Facebook Page that was set up for the people taking the course. It was a chance to see other people’s work, share my own stories, and ask for feedback. At the end of the course, I had set up my blog and was ready to get started.
  3. Self promotion is not easy or natural for me but is a necessary part of the process. I began tentatively sharing with friends, then progressed to Instagram and Twitter. I have only recently begun posting new blog posts on Facebook because many people who follow me are neighbours and acquaintances and not necessarily people who would be interested in my blog. Creating a Facebook Page just for my blog might solve this problem.
  4. Checking stats on WordPress is addictive. It is fun to see how many people are reading the blog and from where. The bar graphs are also nifty, but is this really what I should be focussing on, especially at the beginning? I began a blog because I love to write and as long as that remains my focus all should be well no matter how many people are following me.fullsizeoutput_1e8
  5. My trusty Warriner’s English Grammar And Composition is coming in really handy. If people are going to be reading what I’m writing, I can do them the favour of having it well punctuated and grammatically correct. I have been looking up far more in this book than I thought I would be.
  6. Having a designated writing time is critical for me. I have been setting my alarm for six or six thirty and do my writing before the rest of the day begins. On many days the early start takes some discipline but having this creative time before the busy-ness of the day feels right and good.
  7.  A trusty supply of index cards is very useful. Most of my creative ideas do not come to me when I am writing. They come to me when I am on a long walk, or falling asleep at night, or driving in the car. I jot down these ideas on index cards, ready for the morning when I can develop them into a blog post.
  8. Blog posts that are photo based seem to generate more interest than word based posts, so I try and alternate photo journal type posts with longer more reflective pieces.
  9. Writing a blog is great creative fun and it is also another “pot to stir on the stove” so to speak. Be prepared for the time, effort and thought that goes into writing a blog on a regular basis.
  10. The visuals in a blog are really important. I have learned that taking a picture in the right light makes a huge difference. I am not a big fan (yet) of all the filters. I love a good picture taken in natural light and that often means taking them in the early morning or just before dusk. (But I’m not sure I’m a good person to be taking photo advice from because I’ve been taking all my pictures on my iPhone 6s.)

Hearing a Hum?

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An acquaintance of ours who lives a few country roads over from us called a couple of  weeks ago. He wanted to know if we had been noticing any new sounds recently. Sound travels in mysterious ways in this mountain valley: there are always new noises arriving on the shifting winds. I can, for example, hear a cannon’s sonic booms on stormy days in the summer coming from a neighbouring village which is a famous apple growing region. The cannon’s booms are thought to protect the trees from hail that might be forming in the clouds. And I hear the “beep, beep” backup sound of a truck early in the morning that we have traced to an industrial dairy farm just south of us in the United States. But, no, I have not been hearing a hum.

The hum he described was as if a truck were parked outside with its engine idling. (Some people have described the sound as an idling diesel engine with a pulsating sound pattern.) He has been hearing this sound at his home and in the surrounding area since May of 2016. It is constant and disconcerting and he is trying to discover its source both anecdotally, from asking and talking to people, and scientifically.

And herein begins the mystery. It seems that some people are able to hear low frequency sounds without being able to identify the source. My acquaintance, for instance, hears the sound but his wife doesn’t. And this is not a new phenomenon that has befallen just him. Over the past twenty years reports of this hum have surfaced around the world, most often in rural areas and small urban centres. There have been a concentration of people affected in such places as: Windsor, Ontario; Auckland, New Zealand; Taos, New Mexico; and Bristol, England. The two largest funded studies of this phenomenon were carried out in Kokomo, Indiana and Taos, New Mexico and all of the results have been inconclusive. The Windsor Hum which was investigated by the Canadian government was thought to originate on Zug Island across the Detroit River in Michigan. Even when there is a likely source, as in this Windsor study, it seems to be hard to prove conclusively.

My neighbour reports that he hears the hum inside his home and outside as well. It seems stronger in enclosed spaces like a parked car and in his home. Here is where it gets interesting. He hears the sound in and around his home but not in some of the neighbouring villages. This would seem to point to an outside source.

There have been all kinds of theories that have been put forward to explain what seems to be a mostly unexplainable phenomenon. They range from conspiracy theories to cellphone towers to VLF (very low frequency radio waves). It has even been suggested that these people are sensitive to certain vibrations that their ears interpret as sound. Tinnitus, a disturbance of the auditory system, has also widely been considered as a possible cause of the hum. It doesn’t explain, however, why the hum would not be heard in certain places.

This we do know, people who are affected have had to learn to live with this constant humming sound. My neighbour reports hearing the hum 24 hours a day. It is invasive and frustrating and he is not sleeping well. He is doing all he can to try and trace the source of the hum and is looking to the scientific community and universities for help.

My one hope is that he and all the other sufferers find some kind of relief. I’ll keep you posted.

 

Sources: http://www.icben.org/2008/PDFs/Cowan.pdf
http://theconversation.com/cracking-the-mystery-of-the-worldwide-hum-60296
https://newrepublic.com/article/132128/maddening-sound
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum

The Clay Jug

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Pot by Vicki Tansey

Clay Jug

Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains
and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!
All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.
The acid that gets gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.
And the music from the strings that no one touches, and the source of all water.

If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.

Kabir
version by Robert Bly

 

The third post I made on this blog was called Clay…And Me.

It began: I tend to process things more deeply (some might say intensely) than many people, so it is no surprise that some of my favourite stories are of transformation. And some of my favourite stories of transformation revolve around clay. 

I just rediscovered this Kabir poem and it seems such a natural fit with the other clay references I posted. You can read the full post here.

 

 

There’s a Ghost In the House

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You know how some of the most startling information comes to us in the most nondescript of ways. That is exactly how I heard about the ghost in the house.

I was finishing up from a long and tiring day at school, slumped at my desk trying to make some order of the papers I had flung there. The custodian was also doing his part to bring some order to the chaos and was sweeping the floor beside me. He asked if we had met Mr. Harland yet. “Mr. Who?” He had my attention now despite the pull of wrapping up early and heading home.

“Mr. Harland,” he replied in the same casual way.

“Who is Mr. Harland?” I pressed.

“Well, if you haven’t seen him yet, you surely will. He’s around.” And with that cryptic statement he moved out into the hallway to talk to someone wanting his expertise on this or that.

I don’t know if it was just because I was tired at the end of the day or because in my family I had learned to gather important information in little morsels thrown my way just as this had been, but I didn’t run after him. That doesn’t mean that this new information wasn’t put at the very top of my: When I Have a Minute List.

You see my daughter had just bought a home on one of the winding mountain roads not far from where I live. The two storey house had a new addition full of windows and light but the original part of the house where the kitchen and dining room were located had been a log house dating to the 1800’s. This log home and the surrounding terrain happened to be the ancestral home of my friend, the custodian.

I had gathered from our brief, cryptic exchange that he was telling me about something otherworldly. I have always been curious about ghosts and have heard stories from more than one person about their encounters with them, but up until now none of these presences had a personal connection.

I had a lot to process that night. I have a very vivid imagination that can easily slip into the macabre without a ghost presence pushing it in that direction. I thought about my daughter being alone in her home and wondered if I should let her know this latest piece of information. Maybe I could talk about the plumbing and the new lighting and slip in, “Oh, by the way, there’s a ghost.”

After a restless night spent tossing and turning, I decided I needed more information. At school the next day, I broached the subject once again. “I am wondering,” I began, “about Mr. Harland.” There was a long, deliberate silence. I decided I would just come out with it. “Was Mr. Harland an axe murderer?” Another long pause ensued.

“No, Mr. Harland was a very good man, a kind man,” was the answer. It seems he had decided at one point and for his very personal reasons that he had had enough and committed suicide. With this newest information, my perceptions about this particular ghost made a radical shift.

Whenever I spent time at the house after that I was always very conscious of Mr. Harland’s’s story. My daughter, who was living overseas, never actually slept in the house while she owned it, but she did have a whole series of renters none of whom ever shared any stories of encounters with Mr. Harland. My son, who knew the story and spent a few weekends there with friends, said that the only thing he noticed was that when the group gathered for a meal they all felt as if someone was missing, only to see that they were all there.

I have always been curious about ghosts. I find it interesting that everyone I have talked to over the years about “ghosts in the house” speak of these presences with a warm affection. Talking about ghosts seems to be a bit of a taboo subject for some, but for others it just seems to  be a fact of life.

For my part, I am deciding to pursue my curiosity and gather more stories. Homes come with all kinds of stories, it seems.

Bloodroot…native flowering plant #2

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Bloodroot (Sanguinaria Canadensis) is the second native plant to flower along our roadside in the spring – and my personal favourite. It has 8 to 12 delicate white petals and yellow stamens. If you break the flower stalk or cut into the rhizome you will see a very  bright orange liquid seeping out. Hence the name.

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There’s something otherworldly about these first appearances of native plants in what is for the most part still a barren landscape. I can’t help but imagine what a gift these first flowering plants were to our ancestors who struggled through a long winter and were looking for remedies for the vitamin deficiencies and other ills that befell them during the winter months.

The rootstock of bloodroot is caustic and poisonous but has been used medicinally for its antiseptic and emetic (causing vomiting) properties. People found a way to use these first flowering plants in safe ways but I can only imagine the trial and error that went into making these discoveries. On a safer note, the bright orange liquid that is so startling when first seen was discovered to be a great natural dye and was used by basketmakers.

The wheel of the season continues to turn and with it my attention turns to some of the first edible wild plants that can be foraged in this area. Stay tuned.

Marching Right Along

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Marking the Beginning of the Season

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We’re a bit fatalistic about the weather in these parts. Maybe it’s the long, cold winters that seem to never end or maybe it’s because when weather systems move in they can linger in the mountains for weeks. Whatever the reason, we can never totally enjoy the sunshine because in the back of our minds is always the thought that the next weather system is lurking in the shadows.

Spring arrives here about mid April and the last plants end their bloom sometime towards the end of September. The growing season is short. Since taking up residence here in the country,  I have been chronicling the march of the seasons by watching for the roadside flowers that are in bloom at any given time. And the very first plant to bloom is coltsfoot. It is a small dandelion like flower with a scaly stem. They can be seen growing on the gravel at the side of the roads or peeking out from under dead plant material. The hoof shaped leaves appear at the end of the flowering cycle, hence the name coltsfoot.

It is a welcome sight to these winter weary eyes and a sign that the season is just beginning. In the past it would not only have been a seasonal marker, but would have also been harvested as a cure for pleurisy, asthma and coughs. The Greeks and Romans had the best idea. They treated asthma by burning coltsfoot on charcoal fires and inhaling the smoke through reeds, alternating puffs with sips of wine. My kind of a cure!

If I had a sun dial for the seasons, coltsfoot would be found at number 1. It marks the beginning and holds the promise of all the other plants to follow. On this grey day  in April, that promise is enough for me.

Ten Things…

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IMG_0799Ten things….about me:

1. I’m called Caramel by some of my youngest friends. The young daughter of our dear friends called me Caramel instead of Carolyn one day and it has stuck. Another coincidence: I was substituting in a kindergarten class a short time later and I introduced myself as Carolyn. Towards the end of the day a child tugged on my arm to get my attention and said “Caramel, I was wondering…” So, Caramel it is.

2. I’m an HSP, INFP, and introvert. This means that I tend to process things more deeply than many people and need time alone to recharge. I do not enjoy or feel comfortable in social situations where everyone is milling about sharing small talk. These situations are overstimulating for me and I usually want to retreat as fast as I can. I love intimate dinner parties where conversations can go a little deeper or even bigger gatherings where I can find a quiet space to talk with a small group of people. Outdoor events are great for this!

3. I always seem to run a little late and there is a mad frenzy as I am about to leave (often with swear words involved). I think this is rather a newish thing for me but I would have to check with my family. The mad frenzy has always been there but feeling that I have more time than I actually do is new. I am aware that I am doing this so you would think I could allow a bit more time but no… It is not logical.

4. I won public speaking awards when I was young. This might not seem to quite match my profile (see #2) but speaking on a stage when I was prepared was actually something I enjoyed and was good at. I was also my high school Valedictorian. I think part of the reason I liked public speaking so much was because it gave me a platform to share my writing.

5. It’s a big deal for me to invite people into my home. I can entertain and am rather good at it, but I rarely do unless the house is already full and a few more people don’t really make any difference. My home is my sanctuary and the place I retreat to when I need to be quiet and recharge. Entertaining is a bit at odds with this. I wish sometimes I was more of a hostess.

6. I play tennis once or twice a week with the same group of tennis friends. I came to tennis rather late in life but I have always gravitated to racquet sports and was a badminton player in high school. I learn a lot about mindfulness and being present from playing tennis. And about being grounded and confident and strong. The quality of my tennis game is directly related to how I am feeling and what I am thinking. I play my best when I am totally present, focused, and happy. I think this is called being in the “zone.”

7. We were back to the landers in the 1970’s. We were vegetarian and grew our own food. I remember our grocery bill at the time was about ten dollars a week. There were a whole group of like minded people who were drawn to this area at that time and we all socialized and grew businesses and raised our families together. We are still close friends with many of these same people.

8. I am a messy creative. When I am doing anything creative I am a wild woman. Even as I am typing this I am surrounded by cards, pens, notes, a journal, massage oil, a glass of water, a cheque book, and a basket to hold whatever is not out on the table. When I cook or garden or paint it is even more chaotic. There is not much organization but lots of passion. (I will do a photo journal of this one day so you can see for yourself.)

9. Twin boys run in our family. My grandfather was an identical twin and my great uncles were fraternal twins (one was tall and dark and one was short and blonde). My daughter just gave birth to twin boys. All we know for sure about this newest set of family twins is that they are very, very cute.

10. I earned an income from being a school teacher for most of my life but never fully identified as a teacher. When I was leaving high school with little idea of who I was or how I wanted to navigate the world a teacher of mine suggested I would make a good teacher and so that was what I proceeded to become. It was the easy, practical, and it turns out wise choice: teaching allowed me to stay in the country where I wanted to live and make a decent salary. It was not a calling for me as it is for some people. The part I really loved was the end of the day when the children left and I could be quiet and dream up interesting things to do the next day. Another favourite part was creating a welcoming, homey space and featuring art prominently in our lessons and on the walls. When I felt overstimulated, which was frequently, I would go into the hall and let the colours of their art seep into my tired soul.