Feeling kinda down so I headed on up

Sunday afternoon it took me a little time to realize I was in a bit of a glum funk. It didn't present itself as my being a jackass or surly man, but rather as feeling a sort of restless boredom. And I very seldom get bored. I was feeling irratible and now that I look back I think I know what it was. Sunday was a sunny beautiful day. The world beckoned. And I missed my friends.

I moved back to my hometown over a year ago to live with my Grandpa. And we have our share of laughs and play a lot of cribbage (a card game). I've been challenged, struggled, learned, and grown during my time here. This very blog and my renewed creative energies being invested in my writing, photography, and the emergence of my youtube videos, can to some degree be attributed to the fact that I haven't had the opportunity to just go adventure with my good friends who now live at least one (some two) ferry rides away from me.

So Sunday I was missing my friends and feeling kinda booey. And even though I didn't know it in my head, my body knew what to do.... get me out walking.

Sechelt, the town I currently live in, is situated on an isthmus, the little connecty bit, between the main continent of North America and the Sechelt Peninsula. If that little sandy piece of land were taken out by a natural catastrophe, or giant space robots, the Sechelt Peninsula would become Sechelt Island. So it's pretty flat between the two beaches but bordered by some hillish wooded beckons. To which call I heeded as I strode upward.







Getting off the scooter-traveled terrain of the lowlands and into the greater reality of nature always helps soothe my spirit and take my mind into curious places. I muse upon the geology of the terrain, the way it fosters the various ecologies and systems, the way the hydrological cycle has impacted and shaped the land. I see how the plants have grown based on their various strategies to get the water, light, and the nutrients they need to survive.



I encounter and think upon humanity's role in the region and place. How the first people would have encountered the area and traveled this very shore to spread out upon the continent. How would it have looked before the Europeans came? How did it look when my great-grandfather came? How it has changed in my time. How it will change after me. We are never at a fixed point. We exist in the midst of process, of rise and fall, ebb and flow, action, consequence, and process.

How it would seem through the eyes of an insect. Born, live, mate, die. Repeat.
A whole lifetime in such a short time for us.
Or through the eyes of a Hummingbird. Flower Flower. Slow moving objects to fly around.
What about the lifespan of a tree? Would we seem like insects flitting about? Except with chainsaws and axes and the ability to drop them before they could register what was going on? Ents move slowly and think slowly.
What about the age and process of a landmass, of a mountain range? Being pushed up, glaciated, worn down, carved by rivers... clothed and covered with moss and lichen and trees and shrubs.

When I get outside I get outside of myself. I am once again immersed in reality. Immersed in the vibrant amazing complicated and wonderous world we inhabit.

And us. What is our role through this? In what ways do we impact, relate, change, be changed by, the world around us.



Are there some petroglyphs in the world that were taboo like graffiti when they were first painted? Did some artistic people go to hidden places to leave a mark on a stone? What is it for a human to leave a mark that will outlast them? We all leave marks; very few of them on stone.



I broke a sweat and breathed in greater gasps as I made my way through the bush and into an old quarry. I bet these places invoke a wide range of different feelings and terms for many people. So it is with many things in life. It is simple to see it in one light and argue from a single position. I have difficulties with this method often in life because I have a tendency to see more facets.

Here is a video of some of my process and experience in that quarry. A Maplemusketeer method moment if you will ;) (near the end it gets windy/louder, my apologies in advance as I just film with my little point and shoot camera)



in what some would term an ugly place I saw the following..























Perspective is quite the thing. How we see the small things and how we see the big things.

A rock quarry as an example for humanity.

Is it simply a case of ugly/beautiful, good/bad, destruction/creation? Or is there something deeper, threaded through it all?

A process and a wisdom that moves and breathes and whispers.




Now it's time for me to go home for lunch, and then outside. To look and see and learn.
Be well and may you learn to hear the whispers deep and good..

and here's a moment's whimsy at a garage sale