Dispatch from An Arbornaut September 13, 2023
Two things.
I am not sure I’m comfortable with calling myself An Arbornaut for these reasons:
I am not sure what An Arbornaut is and who defines what An Arbornaut is
I am afraid of what other people might think.
I am not afraid of what other people might think.
The experience of living an Arbornaut’s life defines what An Arbornaut is.
An Arbornaut communicates with trees. An Arbornaut pays attention to the space between the forest and the field, the mountain and the prairie, the human and the other in nature. As in nature, as in life. An Arbornaut lives a life of being in nature and being in community, no matter the chaos.
I guess that’s the first thing.
The second thing is…update from here.
I’m driving through the land of the birch, the bear, the moose, the lynx, the white sucker fish. We are driving through Riding Mountain. Riding Mountain is not a mountain; it is an escarpment, a birchwood forested rise of earth and rock in the middle of the inland sea. A former shoreline. A place where people would have gathered. Where the Sabre Tooth tiger, the mammoth, the great bear and beaver lived as predator and prey. It might have been a place where beings were visible who are not visible now.
Corn fields grow here. And, hay, hay, hay, hay. We’ve driven through great dust clouds rising from the combine engine as it pulls roots, rolls stems, orders and compacts the plant and whatever wild-like experience it’s had in the field.
The rocks have held significance on this trip. In Grasslands National Park, we rubbed up against a buffalo rubbing stone, a great pink and purple/red piece of granite (I’ll have to look up the type of stone) on the top of a bluff. In Riding Mountain the eastern end of Clear Lake, an amazing fossil lays in two pieces. One half of a two-bums-wide rock is one piece of the fossil- it has a converse impression - (a sticky-out impression)- of a long ridged…something. A snake, a reptilian behemoth neck or spine, about 50 cm long. The ridges are well-defined. The second half of the rock lays two metres away. It is clearly the other half of the first rock because it shares the fossilized impression. This half is concave, caved-in, with the same ridges as the first rock in the same placement and order. Surely this find is significant to many.
The eye is drawn, at the Wishing Well park away from the impressive rocks to an English garden with a bit of wildness in plant choice and decomposition. Two red Muskoka chairs set under a big tree signify “this is a spectacular classic Canadian stop.”
The small flowing river wends back and forth and five or six bridges span her curves as she empties into Clear Lake. A pathway connects the land between bridges and leads up a south westerly slope to a Wishing Well, a semi-circle bricked and mortared wall one might lean over and look down into. A sign suggests all coins will be collected and donated to help keep the area blooming and tidy.
I wonder if it’s a good idea for people to throw money into a body of water?
I wonder if where that well is, if that spot was a spot where people came to drink from a spring, long before it became a well for wishes you could buy-in to get a chance at having them come true?
A cedar tree stands at the last groomed bend of the river before it flows under a road bridge and into Clear Lake. The cedar’s three trunks emerge from the ground as if to open to the sky, like an early-stage of a blossom. The cedar’s flat, lacy leaves are green with orange-dying speckles from skirt to crown. I moved close to the cedar and asked, How’s the view? I looked ahead through the trunks. The lake shimmered blue, the air smelled of cedar spice and sun and a bit of water. It was cold last night. And damp. A perfect nasal sensory condition. What’s happening to your leaves? I asked. The cold, I heard, and something they’re spraying on the lawn and flowers stresses me.
As the set of red Muskoka chairs signals, this is an Important Location and Instagram-worthy-stopping-spot among the wild and tidy flower beds. Here, you look out and see water, your ally. Whether or not your mind remembers this fact: 95% of you is water, your body knows. You feel a pull of a smile on the corner of your lips, a softening around your eyes. You let your gaze wander, let your hearing surf on the trickling of the water. Closer to the river, just west of a set of picnic tables, the unusual rock with the fossil impression (the sticky-out half) is in the middle of a circle of rocks– a circle marked by solid rocks placed equidistant from one another, north-east-south-west. Three smaller-sized rocks were placed on an imaginary line between each large rock and the next: 12 smaller-sized rocks, four larger sized rocks, and one 1/2 of a largest, fossilized middle rock. 17 rocks total…that I could see. Did someone like me, someone who listened to the cedar tree, ever sit here and watch the water and listen to the trickle of the river? Did the someone see beauty? Did the someone say thank you? Did the someone find a way to give the cedar a drink of water?
Do you see the fun in all of this? The fun of listening to a tree, of noticing the way the light touches leaves? Of drawing what you see? Of writing what you hear? Of letting the imagination expand? Do you think it’s possible in your sometimes tamed life for an expanded way of noticing?
We’re sleeping outside, under the shelter of our tent, on the comfort of our thermarests (we travel long days to our put-in five days from now). Each night, we are in a new land. Each land has something to say. Sometimes I hear little. Sometimes I hear more.
An Arbornaut is a risk-taker in the area of communication. An Arbornaut wants to be understood and wants to understand, but may make many mistakes in translation. An Arbornaut wants to sing, to dance, to draw, to photograph, to communicate in sign language and symbols. An Arbornaut is looking for the evidence of love. An Arbornaut wants to be evidence of love.
I’m handing out bookmarks I’ve made with pencil and watercolour. The back of each bookmark includes my email address and my website. This is a project of engagement: An Arbornaut’s Dispatch, a documentation process of thread and needle, watercolour, scroll and drawing pencil and fine point black pen.
I dreamed earlier of a sticker on the side of the Subaru. A tree as symbol. An Arbornaut’s web address. Why? I wonder. Is there something about what I’m doing which might help someone? Is the novel I’m writing the help I’ve been asked to provide? Is all of it, all the time, the way of being in the world with gratitude?
Recommendations:
National Grasslands National Park in southern Saskatchewan. West block has an incredible 11 km hike through hills and valley among sage and bison, rattlesnake and hawk. East block has an awesome ecotour and a campground with a panorama view.
We listened to Becky Chambers’ second novel in the Wayfarer series. Highly recommended. Love is always love. Even in the future. Even among inter-species. Also by her: Praise for the Wild Built and Prayer for the Crown Shy, future monk meets robot. Much more than I thought it would be.
Mixed Nuts and Seeds as snack mix! I roasted them myself- salty and delicious and whole food.