The Ramblings and Wanderings

Archive for the ‘Musings About the Land’ Category

Although my feet
Have never walked
Upon ancestral lands

And I’ve never heard
The winds sing a song
Across the Motherland

Though I have never
Laid my own hands
Upon a standing stone

I will sing the old song
I will honour the old gods
I will learn the old ways
And make them new again

For a man or woman
Who is without roots
Finds it all too easy
To cut down another’s tree

And so I will connect
With this New World
I will love, I will learn
This, my dear land

New ways for me to make
Like forefathers of old
New paths for me to blaze
New stories to be told

I will sing the old songs
I will honour the old gods
I will learn the old ways
And make them new again

The mountain repeats the sound of my hatchet back to me

The sun sinks and the air cools quickly

The rhythm of my little axe draws me in

The thinning veil draws me out

The sun sets behind the hills

The moon does not rise

The skies darken and it begins to snow

The Hallowed Tide is here

The forest beckons seductively

I know better

I go inside and build up the hearth fire

 

W i n t e r

By Felix Salten

The leaves were falling from the great oak at the meadow’s edge. They were falling from all the trees. One branch of the oak reached high above the others and stretched far out over the meadow. Two leaves clung to it’s very tip. “It isn’t the way it used to be.” said one leaf to the other. “No,” the other leaf answered. “So many of us have fallen off tonight we’re almost the only ones left on the branch.” “You never know who’s going to go next,” said the first leaf.

“Even when it was warm and the sun shone, a storm or a cloudburst would come sometimes, and many leaves were torn off, though they were still very young. You never know who’s going to go next.” “The sun hardly shines now,” sighed the second leaf,” and when it does, it gives no warmth. We must have warmth again.” “Can it be true,” said the first leaf, “can it really be true, that others come to take our places when we’re gone and after them still others, and more and more?” “It really is true,” whispered the second leaf. “We can’t even begin to imagine it, it’s beyond our powers.” “It makes me very sad,” added the first leaf. They were very silent a while.

Then the first leaf said quietly to itself, “Why must we fall?” The second leaf asked, “What happens to us when we have fallen?” “We sink down .” “What is under us?” The first leaf answered, “I don’t know. Some say one thing, some another, but nobody knows.” The second leaf asked, “Do we feel anything, do we know anything about ourselves when we’re down there?” The first leaf answered, “Who knows? Not one of all those down there has ever come back to tell us about it.” They were silent again.

Then the first leaf said tenderly to the other, “Don’t worry so much about it you’re trembling.” “That’s nothing,” the second leaf answered, I tremble at the least thing now. I don’t feel so sure of my hold as I used to.” “Let’s not talk any more about such things,” said the first leaf. The other replied, “No, we’ll let it be. But-what else shall we talk about?”

It was silent, but went on after a little while, “Which of us will go first?” “There’s still plenty of time to worry about that,” the other leaf said reassuringly. “Lets remember how beautiful it was, how wonderful, when the sun came out and shone so warmly that we thought we’d burst with life. Do you remember? And the morning dew and the mild and splendid nights .?

“Now the nights are dreadful,” the second leaf complained, ” and there is no end to them.” “We shouldn’t complain, ” said the first leaf gently. “We’ve outlived many, many others.” “Have I changed much?” asked the second leaf shyly. “Not in the least,” the first leaf said. “You think so only because I’ve gotton to be so yellow and ugly. But it’s different in your case.” “You’re fooling me,” the second leaf said. “No, really,” the first leaf answered eagerly, “believe me, you’re as lovely as the day you were born. Here and there may be a little yellow spot. But it’s hardly noticeable and makes you only more beautiful, believe me.” “Thanks,” whispered the second leaf, quite untouched. I don’t believe you, not altogether, but I thank you because you’re so kind. You’ve always been so kind to me. I’m just beginning to understand how kind you are.

“Hush,” said the other leaf, and kept silent itself, for it was too troubled to talk any more. Then they were both silent. Hours passed. A moist wind blew, cold and hostile, through the treetops.” “Ah, now,” said the second leaf, “I ” Then it’s voice broke off. It was torn from it’s place and spun down.

Winter had come.

From the book: “Bambi a Life in the Woods”, by Felix Salten written in 1928

As I cross my fingers and toes and murmur “Safe, safe, safe” to myself the airplane lifts, we take off and rise up abouve the river valley, passing over low mountains once as tall and mighty as the Rockies … or nearly so. Now they are withered and wind scored, worn down to their very bones. Overgrown with dust and sagebrush, bare rock thrusting out of the crust of the Earth and into a perfect Indian Summer sky.

I know this Province like I know my own body. I recite the names of rivers and lakes, peaks and towns like an invocation as we pass over. There runs the North Thompson River winding up a green valley surrounded by brown hills and low mountains. There is Salmon Arm; the Monashee Mountains give way to the Kootenays before we pass over the Arrow Lakes stretching up to the North and out of sight.

The Land grows greener as we move east. The green glorious peaks of the Kootenays give way to the snow caped Rockies. Rising up like great waves upon an angry sea of earth, stone, snow and forest, the Rockies are an impressive sight to behold whether you are flying abouve them or standing at their roots, in the shadows of the great mountains.

Along the way one shape stands out to me. Repeating again and again. This is the shape of a streambed reaching out and through the land, the shape of the tops of ridges, of tree branches. This is the shape of the valleys far below, cutting their way into a mountainous landscape.

I touch my heart, my lungs. I trace my circulatory and nervous systems. Finding within myself the same shape reflected and repeated. This shape, this sacred geometry, this doodle of Nature reminds me that my beating heart is made of the same stuff as the Land below. Created by the same Hand, born of the same Womb. I feel as if I can trace those distant streambeds and ridges with the same intimacy as I would follow the course of my blood from heart to fingertip and back again. This shape repeats itself, passing before my sight, upon the land, and within my own flesh.

I lean against my window and allow myself to drift into a light doze and then find myself slipping into a dream state, I dream of being handed a white branch of cold flame. Is it the shock of the searing cold of this silver flame that wakes me, or the turbulence that sends my forehead smacking against the window?

Everyone knows that scene in Charlotte’s Web when, Pocahontas like, Charlotte throws herself over the body of a young Wilbur about to the get the axe from her father, thus saving his life.

Since time immemorial children have returned home or woken in the morning to discover the runt pig or calf (or what have you) they had been given to raise has been or must be slaughtered. Then likely served on the family table.

When serial killer Robert Pickton was on trial he told such a story as an attempt to gain sympathy from the jury. Farmers and ranchers watching the news coverage laughed bitterly.

I come from a family with a long history of farmers and hunters, complete with many old world values.

My Dad’s side of the family have been raising cattle probably since white people started raising cattle. The fact that the farm in England where my father and his siblings had been born is now a suburb is a family joke.

My Mother’s family arrived in Canada from Scotland some time around the Highland Clearances (The oldest soldier in Prince Charles Edward’s Army at the Battle of Prestonpans in the ’45 was an 80-year-old Ferguson) but you still see men in kilts at weddings and boys still are given names like Robert and Bruce. Working with animals also runs in this side of the family, many of us breed and show dogs, work in animals rescue, work for veterinarians hospitals, own horse ranches and so forth.

As a child we used the same white nylon rope to tie logs together building rafts on the lake that was used to string up a pig or a deer thus letting the blood drain out prior to butchering. The embedded brown stains in the rope fibre didn’t bother my brothers and I in the slightest. After all, Dad did soak it in a tub of soapy water.

I know what bear tastes like, and moose and elk and bison. I’ve had roast lamb, salted deer, and even rabbit stew.

I have given animals vaccinations, de-worming medicine, changed bandages, removed porcupine quills, cleaned up vomit, sprayed antiseptic on a half wild horse, and helped the vet fill the stomachs of four poisoned dogs with charcoal.

I have jumped into disgusting ditches to pull a drowning animal out of one; I have climbed trees for cats, clambered down mountainsides in the snow to drag a hound by the scruff back up it, I have spent all night sitting on the porch calling a beloved dog home.

I’ve gone to the chicken coop to gather eggs for breakfast, I’ve chased escaped goats, been bitten by horses, had many different kinds of mammals born into my hands, I’ve made the hard decision to put a good but injured animal down.

I have battled Parvovirus, Giaridia, Kennel Cough, infections, and fevers. I have faced cancer, liver failure, and birth defects, stillborn babes, Mange, lice, fleas, broken limbs, abused animals, starved animals and animals torn up by coyotes. I have had animals bleed to death under my hands as I do everything I can to stop it. I have given CPR to a dying animal and tasted death on my lips.

I have fought many battles with death, some I have lost and some I have won.

I have also slaughtered a few and taken a life for my own purposes. Then I give a proper portion back to the land.

I am not a vegetarian. How could I be when hundreds of generations before me relied on the raising of livestock to house and feed themselves?

I have had a pet snake that died of old age be turned into a belt as a gift. I wear real leather clothes. I have bags I store my witchy stuff in that are made of goatskin and deer hide etcetera.

I have buried things and dug them back up again a year or two later. I have bleached bones on the roof of my home.

These things have always been done with an understanding of the Land and with respect and mindfulness.

For this I know:

The reason farm parents make you care for something and then kill it is to teach you to value life and also to understand the power over the other creatures, and the land itself, that we humans wield.

We humans are animals; our bodies and our selves come from this Earth as any other creature.

But we are at the top of the food chain, whether we actually eat other animals or not.

We are the Stewards of the Land. Not in the modern pompous way that thinks we own the Land can do whatever we want, but in that old fashioned, ancient way that we once all knew so well when most of us were farmers, hunters, gatherers.

I learned at a young age that:

If we don’t take proper care of our livestock they get diseases (like Mad Cow) and they die, and then we go hungry.

If we don’t rotate our crops then the land gets sucked dry and the crops will fail and we will go hungry.

If we don’t fish responsibly then we will have disease-ridden fish farms and we will go hungry.

If we tromp around in the woods like we own the place the bears will maul us.

If we pollute the water then we will have nothing to drink and we will die of thirst.

My family has been piss poor farmers likely since before Rome invaded the ancestral lands. My Grandfathers ran farms for landowners, much like their fathers and their fathers.

We do not own the Earth; we are not the Landowners.

We are just running the farm.