The Wheel of the Year

There is controversy around the origin and authenticity of the Wheel of the Year.  But tradition and ceremony evolves, and this is its most recent form.  It doesn't matter how old the Wheel is; the important thing is, it works.  It's nice to recognize and celebrate the turning of the year at anticipated and consistent times.

Eight's a pretty good number.  If we only celebrated the solstices and equinoxes, it wouldn't be enough.  So we have the cross-quarters as well.  That means we celebrate, a month goes by, we celebrate, two months go by, we celebrate, a month goes by . . . that's the pattern.   I was thinking, though, about a cycle of celebrations that would make sense regionally, here on the west coast of Vancouver Island.  Even across-Island, the seasons are different.  Right here in Tofino and Ucluelet, I would suggest this cycle: 


Deep Autumn Storming:  October 21st
Dark Winter:  December 21st
Light Winter:  February 28th
True Spring:  April 30th
Summer:  June 21st
Lucky Late Summer:  August 30th


I also like that my cycle has six festivals. One every two months is the kind of commitment I like. If a month goes by, it's too soon. Two months, and I'm longing to connect and be still.  But! There's lots to be said for the power that builds when many people celebrate simultaneously. The eight observances are already decided upon, and I will celebrate them with everyone else.  To connect them just a little to what is happening in my Wheel of the Year right here where I live, though, and to resolve my dual draw to Druidry and Heathenry, I may call them Dark Winter, Light Winter, Spring, True Spring, Summer, True Summer, Autumn, Deep Autumn. It works for me. 

Heading Out

Notes On the Nuu-Chah-Nulth

I live on the Ucluelet Inlet, and guide kayak trips frequently in the area. There is an incredible amount of First Nations history right here. Every beach has a traditional name and use. Every point, every stretch of water. Before white contact, there were 50,000 people living on the coast from the Brooks Peninsula on Vancouver Island down to Makah territory, just across the US border. That number hit a population low of 2,000 in the '20's and '30's, decimated by introduced disease and by supplies of firearms and ammunition given to select groups or tribes.

The people of the west coast of Vancouver Island from the Brooks Peninsula down, although comprised of many separate tribes, now choose the name Nuu-Chah-Nulth, meaning "All Along the Mountains." This is primarily a language designation, separating them from the Kwakiutl to the north and north-east on the Island, and the Salish to the south and south-east.

Nuu-Chah-Nulth territory is further divided into Northern, Central, and Nitinat. The area I live in is in Central Nuu-Chah-Nulth territory, which includes the Hesquiaht, Ahousaht, Clayoquot, Ucluelet, Toquaht, Uchucklesaht, Tseshaht, and Ohiaht. Even these names are just broad terms for many smaller groups. The Kelsemat were originally of Vargas Island, but joined the Ahousaht after their men were lost in a sealing expedition in the Bering Sea. The Otsosat were of Flores Island, but were almost annihilated by the Ahousaht in the early 19th century. The Wildside Trail on Flores Island, established by the modern Ahousaht, has interpretive signs at the sites where much of the warfare occurred.

With thanks to Denis St. Clair for much of the above information.

A Perfect Day in the Valley

Gale force winds took me off the water early yesterday, so I had an extra half day off. Decided to go to Courtenay. Way overdue. It's been so great so far.

Drove the Island Highway that's all early-summered out with tall white daisies, Nootka roses, lupines, and broom. Mid-summer there'll be California poppies.

I'm getting to see everyone. Started out last night in a rainstorm, met up with Serena for dinner at Tita's. We talked and talked and talked and had a half litre of margaritas, and it's like I never left. Met up with pregnant Carolyn and Serena this morning for coffee at the Freakin'. Then went straight from there to Pho for lunch with Serena. We were supposed to meet Sarah and Denise there too, but they couldn't make it. Dropped by Denise's to pick up a bike for Serena, and got to catch up with Chuck quickly. Then Serena and I met up with Sarah in Cumberland for mountain biking.

It was amaaazing! We were out there for three and a half hours or so. Went up and up and up the logging road forever, climbing and climbing. Bright sunshine today, and it was hot. Skipped all our usual trails so that we could do the stuff at the top. I think I'm doing the same thing again tomorrow, it was so good. Huge workout. Connected to Bear Buns, which was a super fun ride, lots of ups and downs, technical but not too, and not too rooty. From there over 42nd Street, which is a trail, not a street, and then across the Sykes Bridge, and down the western part of Teapot to Allen Lake. I wanted to jump in, and we all did. Skinnydipping, first swim of the year. The water wasn't even that cold. I swam right out into the middle and back. Then we went along the old railroad grade for a while, and somehow missed the Crafty Butcher turnoff, but caught up with Lower Crafty and did that. Then more logging road, Black Hole, Space Nugget, and out. Super fun ride. I was ready to go again at the end of it, so stoked.

Had a couple hours to chill, then met up with Carolyn to go see Sex and the City 2. Fun fluff entertainment. And I still get to go see Lisa tomorrow morning, and check on Quincy, and go for coffee with Denise in the afternoon, and meet Jimmy for drinks after work before I drive back to Ukee. And I'm getting another ride in tomorrow too, hopefully with Sarah.

Best Courtenay visit ever. I love my friends and I'm so grateful for my life.

Vancouver Bike Couriers

These aren't my photos, but they are some of my closest bros. Somebody did a good job.


Newf


Andrew


Sammi

A Very Subjective Reading List

I just transferred my whole booklist from my old blog, I'm Up Next, to this one. Item by item, cut and paste, book by book. I started questioning whether it was worth it, and whether I didn't have better things to do. But I need that list. Going through it, I realized that not even a photo album would give me a better chronological account of what I've been up to since 2007. I don't have this cross-referenced or written down. All I have is a list of books; the rest I remember instantly, the way a smell or a song brings back a time.

I was reading Summer Gone, I the Divine, and White Slaves of Maquinna during Sarah's and my Nootka sea kayaking trip. I used the advice from First Things First during the planning of the trip.

Everything from The Success Principles up to Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates was read while living at Lennie's. I'd just been told I would soon be out of a bike courier job, and I was planning what to do next, considering going to Barcelona and couriering there on my EU passport. With The Success Principles I was trying to orchestrate a massive, final vision to achieve for my future.

Then I received a scholarship to take Humber College's Summer Writing Workshop in Toronto, and study under Wayson Choy. I read his book The Jade Peony, and started All That Matters, and then everything from there up to around Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach reflect a concerted effort to read quality fiction and become a serious writer.

Then I was planning and packing, and not going to the library. From A Brief History of Everything to The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, I was just scrounging books up around the house, from Lennie, Morgan, and Jimmy.

With The Piano Tuner, I was at Mum's place in Victoria before flying to North Carolina before flying to Central America, the destination on which I'd finally decided. I talked her into lending me the book for the flight.

I didn't read much at Dad and Liza's, just The Sea of Trolls. I think Cowboys Are My Weakness was a Christmas present, and I read it in an airport between flights, before I even reached Central America. Left it on the seat for the next person, because I'd forgotten all travellers trade their books for new books. I regretted it later.

I read The Poisonwood Bible, Bel Canto, and Immortality in a hostel in Nicaragua, sick sick sick. I was so sick it was all I could do to walk to the toilet to shit and puke, and make it back to my bed. I was sick for ten days and lost about ten pounds as well.

Then Lisa met up with me in San Juan del Sur, and between surfing and cooking over a bonfire for all our meals, and hanging out with my man Allam, and loving happy hour and real lettuce and blue cheese at Pelican Eyes hotel, and lounging in hammocks, and surfing and surfing and surfing, I read from The Samurai's Garden to The English Patient.

Then Lisa left, and I went alone to a new town, and from P.G. Wode's The Code of the Woosters to The Tipping Point I made my way through Honduras to the river-based border of Guatemala. I read Fight Club in a jungle hostel where we swam in a green green river.

By Thornyhold I was in Tikal, an ancient former kingdom in the highlands of Guatemala, and by East of the Mountains I was Xela's newest resident. I stayed in Xela through Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man, taking Spanish lessons, doing capoeira, and hitching up to hot springs, and then by Ask and It Is Given I was back at Mum's, in transition.

And with Hey, Nostradamus, back at Lennie's, in transition. Scrounging up books while they were out guiding a kayak trip or something. Shortly after, I was in my brand new apartment on Commercial Drive in Vancouver, starting work as a bike courier and reading Susan Trott's books as a kind of comfort food. With Wisdom of the Elders, I began seriously considering applying to graduate school for archaeology and anthropology.

Three Cups of Tea, along with Late Nights On Air, was the start of a short stint in Gabe Barrow's book club. I don't know what my problem was. I kept flaking out and not showing up. I think I felt like a dirty skid, broke and working as a bike courier. Felt out of place at the book club meetings. I read Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters on a curb on Pender Street, hoping my dispatcher would leave me alone for a while so I could finish the chapter, knowing I should really be getting lunch while I was clear of calls.

I think Women Who Run With the Wolves was the book that spurred me on to get out of my broke, admittedly failed and going nowhere existence. I'd tried to apply to the UBC graduate writing program and had been denied. Unless I got accepted to an archaeology program, I had no reason to be there anymore.

But my courier friends got me through. I started hanging out with Dominique a lot, and every weekend we'd take Easy Hikes Around Vancouver with us and get a dose of nature.

Simon gave me To Siberia, Tessa gave me The Earth's Blanket, and Away by Jane Urquhart . . . blew me away. I felt like I could breathe again, and I began applying to B.C. Parks for a position as a ranger. I read A New Earth, that Jason gave me, and things started to happen. By the next book, All My Friends Are Superheroes, I was pretty much packed up and ready to start work as a conservation officer with Alberta Parks. B.C. Parks had had too many cuts, and although I was hired with them, they passed me on to Alberta. Grande Prairie. Northern Alberta -- I didn't care. Anywhere to get out of the cycle of poverty that was living in Vancouver, although I would miss miss miss all my good courier friends.

I read Osprey Island during my last days in Vancouver, a score in a box on someone's front lawn. By Small Ceremonies, I was in Grande Prairie and my new friend Carrie was asking what books I'd taken out of the library. The first thing I did when I got to GP was pay twenty bucks for a library card. And from Creation's Heartbeat all the way through Tears of the Giraffe, I underwent a sea change. I regained a sense of the spiritual, a connection to nature, and a new connection to inner guidance. All this in the heart of redneck Alberta, while tearing around on a quad giving out violation tickets, while 4x4'ing in my F150 work truck, while drinking good whiskey around a campfire with the hottest grizzly bear researcher ever. Books. It was books that did it.

And then I came home to Courtenay. And Serina lent me The Book of Negroes. And Lennie lent me Outliers. And I left it all behind to move here, brand new, to Tofino, and here I am now, hoping against hope that the Raincoast Education Society will hire me for Permanent. Full-Time. Work. Work where I can just say, this is my purpose and this is my town. Here I am, here is my job, a job where I can do good things and make a real difference and work in a field I love protecting an area I love, this is where I live and I am Not. Moving. Again.

So I write this in my brand new little cabin just across the street from Chesterman's Beach, where people come from all over the world to surf. I'm finally in my own place again, in the mist and rain and fog, with the waves to listen to crashing at night, surrounded right now by boxes of kitchen gear yet to be unpacked, still sighing over the perfectness of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, hoping to call this home.

October 1st

It's October 1st today. I'm going to live right, moment and action by moment and action. I'm not going to spend anymore time waiting for it all to come together, and then start living. I have to try my best to live my best life all the time.

Get up at 6:30 every morning, and get 8 hours' sleep.

Work out every day, and stretch.

Write down and interpret my dreams.

Do Tarot.

Drink water.

Eat healthy food.

I know all this. I also want to think about my actions from an environmental viewpoint, and try to have integrity. Make the small extra efforts that make a difference. The thing I'm going to commit to doing now, to make it a habit and then go on to the next thing, is having a shower only after I work out. Not twice a day, etc., and not if I haven't worked out. And baths. For now, I'm going to limit myself to one a week.

I'm going to get and stay organized. Stay on top of email and Facebook, now that that's organized. Go through everything I've got right now and get rid of anything I don't want. It's a good time to do it because a lot of my stuff is packed right now. Have a First Things First kind of list going, and use it. Sort my photos and music.

The last thing is that sense of alive, blossoming creativity, self-expression, sexuality, and potential that's growing in me. Wild. I can be that. A Fool on her journey.

There I am on my journey: living by the wild ocean, letting my hair tangle, wearing big jewellry. Working to protect the earth, and acting with integrity. In Tofino, I become more free. I commit to one place and go deep, and let everyone see who I am because I'll be there forever anyway. I'm right beside the whales and the water. A tattoo of an anchor on the inside of my left wrist. A raven on my chest. Artwork. I create. I play classical guitar. I surf and do yoga. I am me.

Should I commit right now, today, to 3 hours a day of something? I could. It's a lot, but I could. Writing, or drawing, or both. Music practice would count too. And research. It's just three hours for my soul. That would be nice.