fond growings of respite...

There are times I revisit moments of my childhood… my growing up on a potato + dairy farm just south of Vancouver… out on the mud flats of East Delta - in the Boundary Bay area…

I spent much time alone and by myself during those “grow-up” years… being a very shy and introverted kid, it was mostly to escape the 'dissonant episodes' in the household where I grew up… 

Time and again, I would flee those intense moments… And so… off I would go… in a ten minute walk or less… out to the back fields to just, be “away” from it all…

It was there in the wide, open breath of fresh air, I would find solace and some peace… and a different quiet… sounds that didn’t threaten, though embraced and held me… I looked forward to the joys of encountering nature from the spaces of flat fields and the domed, white-clouded blue sky…

Often I would take my kite or many kites, and put them all up in the wind, one at a time, and then tie them to the sharp barbed-wired fence or stake them out into the soft, rich earth … I'd lay right down, flat on my back between the angled strings… watching the coloured diamonds and their long tails dancing for hours on end… and if they would fall for whatever reason, I’d run and retrieve them…setting them up, a-flight once again…

​It wasn’t until my later years that, remembering all that “looking up”… that I had come to know the cloud people and their soft ways so well…I guess that was their “way”…’Cause I still know “them” to this day….  During the winters, with a hockey stick and puck, i'd skate forever on the frozen flooded fields...

Sometimes I would build a little fire and invent my own ceremony for whatever reason or not… dreaming up little celebrations that of course, needed celebrating… to sing my own songs to the unending sky, and, dance self-consciously knowing that i wasn't really alone... or incessantly stare at the sparkling flames, burning down quickly to eventual small glowing embers... until they would all die in a sudden extinguished puff of smoke… only… for me to start it all over again…to be a witness to the life-process of flame all over again… I loved being mesmerized by the fire’s tale and it's inviting warmth… how it cleared + fed me…over and over… and it was never the same story…

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In the dark and rainy days of late Fall/winter, I would still venture out to my land of respite… I'd find myself tracking the giant, dignified snowy owls that would come from far away places… They’d put up camp on the barbed-wired fence posts… and wait open-eyed-still for the unknowingly next meal scurrying or flying by…

On my belly, like a World War II soldier without a weapon… I would creep…slowly… silent... invisible…and, track them... hoping, with a bit of luck, to get even closer for a glimpse of their kingly state… Though, never could I get any closer... as often as not with a snap 360-degree turn, the owl would see me… then swiftly launch a silent departure…fly low, a vast spreaded wing-span and glide over to the next fence post or flooded field… Once again, to sit in a perch of stillness, tolerant of the relentless stinging rain… teasingly wait for me… like a game to perhaps break their boredom... 

I swear I could hear their chucklings at their next expected quest by me… Eventually frustrated… I’d stand straight up and stagger over to where one had just been… only to find their tightly-woven pellets of last lunches and suppers strewn on the ground at the foot of the fence post… I’d sit down cross-legged, and carefully, like a scientist, tear open each small, greyish package apart… revealing their regurgitated matted fur-bundle of tiny bones, feathers, fur and hair of field mice and small birds…

I don’t think I ever got close enough to actually see one of those magnificent birds eye-to-eye… 

And so… I have much gratitude and thank sweet Spirit for the back field moments of my childhood - the gifts received in that place with sweet mount Baker holding my back… I thank the dear Goddess for the land and the beings (seen + unseen) that lived there that truly held me, who were my closest friends... I also give thanks for my family, who pushed me to the back fields, my home of refuge and respite, the places of my other Mother… my blessed Earth Mother… the beautiful land... as she fed me… she taught me… she showed me… and she held me… and she still does… she taught me to 'see' in ways I never thought possible...

brightest blessings... weaver x (((o)))

below, a beautiful video of the snowy owls of Boundary Bay - near where i grew up...

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