An Arbornaut’s Dispatch: Friday, September 15, 2023.

I woke up a bit grumpy this morning. Bear-aware weary. I slept intermittently, vigilant for the snuff of a snout, the breaking of a branch. I had not set any alarms- maybe a bell on a string between two trees and in the space between us and where we cooked our food- I had no tools or experience of doing so. I listened to the loons calling out late, a few long sounds echoing across Lake Marie Louise in Sleeping Giant Provincial Park near Thunderbay. We slept in the wilderness walk-in campsites, away from running water, and lights, and far away from our closest campers. It’s as wild as car camping in a national park can get. And, yet, it felt very wild.

The special notice on our park pass: “Recent black bear activity in compound. ZERO tolerance for unattended wildlife attractants.”

I like wildness. I like feeling a bit scared and sleeping outside. I like the sounds and smells, the petrichor (the scent of the world after it rains) that night in particular.

Tom was bear aware last night, especially anything related to food. We walked the dirty dishwater back up the path to the road where we left our car. We tried to keep things clean. Except, I wasn’t very bear aware earlier, when I was starting to make dinner. We arrived at about 6:30 which is early for us but we’re in trees and the lake is in a wide valley area so it was near-dark upon our arrival. So my focus is on hurrying. How do I do more things at once and all of these things faster?

I felt like I was a mom of five kids again, worrying for future Mar’ce’s future. Trying to get everything done all at once so future Mar’ce could rest, feel less stress. So… I missed the opportunity to do my part, front-line, of keeping us protected from the bear.

We had car camping ingredients: red curry paste, rice noodles, red pepper, and Tom’s homegrown shallots and strips of raw chicken. Each time I handle slippery chicken meat, I grieve for the chicken who died. Slippery chicken feels so alive to me. And I thank the chicken. This occupation with my being-to-being responsibility is also one of my focuses and, therefore, might have contributed to my lessening bear awareness as I cut raw chicken on a table about 200 feet from where we would be sleeping.

The cutting board swam in raw chicken juice and ice water that had seeped in through the packaging. Raw chicken juice dripped from the cutting board onto the picnic table and onto the ground. A bear smelling the petrichor of raw chicken juice infused forest would come looking for cheap happy hour.

I could not bring myself to tell Tom. I carried the small scary truth inside me. I rationalized: I can’t add to his worry. Honestly, he keeps me so safe. He protects me from a whole lot of harm because I can attend very closely to one thing and not sense the bigger thing happening around me or behind me. He is aware of so much: the possibility for danger in the landscape, the weather, the roadway, time of day. His experience is wide and deep when it comes to the wilderness. He can alert me to signs, patterns in forms and movement. But, he has one area of weakness: sound.

As I read this to Tom, he says, “What?”

“Sound,” I say. You can’t hear.

Sound Waves. Sonic Resonance. What is not heard might be felt??

Something we don’t talk about is: Tom’s hearing is not as reliable as it once was.

Three summers ago, I heard a bear moving through the forest towards us, breaking branches.

On a bright morning in August three summers ago, I heard the bear we would end up having a serious and heart-pumping conversation with…

Tom didn’t hear anything.

He listened to me, though, and maybe he sensed the bear. Certainly he knew the bear or anything else in the forest would be interested in our food. Our food barrel, lid off, seemed like an invitation to a friend. We weren’t vigilant that day. If we had been vigilant we might have met the bear later in the day, maybe even during the night when we were sleeping. Instead, we survived a stand-off of epic proportions with both Tom’s face and the bear’s face mirroring each other’s What the Hell expression. And, me, I practiced unholstering the bear spray. And then the bear backed away from us and the food barrel, climbed a tree. The bear grumped and humpfed and Tom repeated, over and over, “Hey, Bear, this is our food. Our food. We don’t want any trouble.” The bear, 15 feet up in the tree was so pissed off or scared, he shit down the tree. It’s hard to know exactly how he felt, but did it matter with a marker like that? The bear stretched into a sort of cat yoga pose while holding onto the tree, arched back, butt hovering. A bomb of poop exploded and arced through the sky, fell and fell, smacking leaves and branches.

We left right away. Took us way too long to pack up the tent, the food, all of it and we’d planned to have a great day of adventure there. We had no reason to complain in the adventure department.

So…all of this leads me back to last night. The night when I didn’t sleep well.

Tom and me are surviving this adventure. Together. With each other. And Athena. Athena is part of the whole story, of course. If not for her, we wouldn’t stop at three lakes a day to walk the shore and throw sticks and play.

I stayed awake because I was afraid of the bear. Of having set up the precise situation where a bear would arrive in camp. Not that I don’t like telling real-life stories of bear encounters, but, the danger is real. Who knows how anything is going to react in a situation they haven’t encountered.

So…I was grumpy.

__________________

We packed everything up amid my long sighs, my near crying episode, my long stalk down the road and back. And as we drove, I tried to relax my body, let the stress go. Build some space in for future Mar’ce to have a break.

In all of my grumpiness I blasted, perhaps like the bear and the poop, that maybe I was tired of routine: drive till dark, eat, put up tent, sleep, wake up, do the same thing, over and over. Drive every day. I may have gotten firm in my desire to be heard. I like to create, I said. I miss creating.

Obviously, I’d run out of imagination for what fun I might have in the rain. I avoided thinking about another possibility than “I need to be dry tonight.” We drove towards the dog-friendly new hotel in Hearst, Ontario and the rest of the decisions fell into place. Tom wanted me to enjoy camping. He enjoyed camping. I needed a break from being bear aware or rain weary.

Was I prepared for nine nights on the water and land? We’ve done this many ties, This in-between time of the journey makes me uncertain of my future- terrific time to realize I am more than I think I am. Stronger. More capable. More connected.

We listened to CBC radio Thunderbay as we drove highway 11. Mid-morning programming on CBC Radio is a call-in show, about the Right to Repair bills being introduced and passed through the world. The good news is: we might get our appliances repaired instead of adding them to the landfill. The bad news: so much complaining, and anything without add-on gadgets (ice/water dispensers, ice machines, electronic anything) will last longer than we expect.

CBC Radio reminds me of both old and new, old and new.

On Highway 11, we travel some of the prettiest highway scenery of our trip. Low clouds drift and dissolve in branches of evergreen and birch, yellow-leaves still hanging on. Steep cliffs rise up, like waking giants on either side of the highway, surrounding lake after lake after lake.

Radio caller: “You don’t get anything that lasts 38 years old nowadays, but my Maytag washer just died.”

We are in the country of the rock palisades, north of north. We are in the land of the Raven. We are in the land of the Black Bear. We are listening to CBC radio.

Radio special guest from ifix-it: “Our appliances are complicated. They are not robust and reliable.”

Radio caller pro tip: “We fixed our stove with a q-tip, rubbing alcohol, and a you tube video.”

Radio special guest: “If you look at restaurant stoves, there are no electronics. Cooks who rely on their equipment need robust and reliable.”

Boreal Forest. Stock image. This scene seen many times though.

Soon we will be in the forest with a butane/propane stove to boil water, to heat our dehydrated veggie curry and spaghetti sauce and noodles. Robust. Reliable.

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Athena Swimming at a Lake off HWY 11, Macdiarmid. A scottish/irish lad visited here once.

By the time we were at first lake stop and I met Cedar by the water and Birch in the middle of the grassy picnic area, my mood had lifted, like a weight growing lighter or a veil of fog clearing.

Clouds hung all around, but I found small flowers to notice closely and the whorls and knots of Birch. I took a photo of paper bits from a birch rolled like tiny scrolls. I imagined all the tiny invisible stories in all those scrolls. I picked up the garbage scattered on the ground: Labatt Blue beer cans and the case, some water bottle lids.

My mind had been going as we drove, listening to the CBC radio show and thinking how it might be good for the world, you know, if we developed an understanding that each of us could, actually, learn how to repair our washer and stove and dishwasher, or maybe it would be just one person in our family, but somehow knowing this would help us learn how to repair other things, maybe relationships. People are really having a tough time getting along with each other right now. And, our relationship to the earth seems to require a listening process to understand the schematics, to learn how to communicate in a language of machine, of earth and human. We could become robust. We could become reliable.

Rest now. I heard the words as I was standing next to the Birch.

Rest. Listen. You’re on the right path.

Sometimes this is how the path feels, no matter how beautiful the context.

Tom, Athena and I sat in the car while I wrote this:

We are at the picnic area with the concrete structures for toilets, five weather proof picnic tables, a birch with four fingers extending from an upturned palm. Birch’s four white primary trunks, like four long fingers extended from an opened palm, rise up straight and steady towards the sky. Sixty or seventy or one hundred long willowy branches rise up, too, their stems ranging from deep red in colour at the top of the tree to a dark brown nearing the bottom of the tree.

Birch’s profile is a column shape, a column of golden leaves with white stems of energy connecting sky and earth. Birch is a beauty. When I look now, I think I might see a face. A kind face. Long but with large vision faculties, not eyes, but space, space for reception of something else. The wind, maybe has shaped the growth of the leaves and the falling of them now. The wind whistles from the north east and it pushes the leaves in the middle and the top of the tree harder, these leaves take the biggest hit of wind, meet it head on and they fall fastest. Thank you Birch. Robust. Reliable.

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Calgary Colours : FryWay 11: Leah and Marcia. Friendly. Curious. Adventurers in Food and Friendliness.

We stop at a FryTruck an hour after my encounter with Birch. First time this trip. Highway 11 is famous for FryTrucks, but we haven’t seen many. Two weeks from now, we’ll be out of luck because they’re out of season. But…today is extraordinary. We get out. Look over the menu.

Leah Deans: Food truck owner and Face-at-the-window: How are you today?

Me: Good. Great. How are you?

Leah: Living the Dream.

Note the Specials Board. Recommended…to-go, after fries and a burger or fish…cream puffs or Nana’s banana bread…

And she is, she has been. It’s how she sees it. She always joked she and her mom would run a food truck one day. And they are. Marcia (Mom) is the cook in the truck today but they both love making good food. The short story is Leah and her husband and kids moved from Calgary to Kitchener, Ontario. Her husband learned chainsaw carving from the former owner of the chip truck who bought it for his kids and they worked it for three summers to pay for all their college expenses and to buy the truck!

Leah: Fryway 11, I told my husband, wouldn’t it be a thing to have a food truck on Highway 11?

She mentioned a chip truck isn’t the same as a food truck: fries and fries and fries are available in the most delicious combinations– hand cut and perfectly fried, with Quebec poutine (fries, Quebec cheese curds and gravy). Optional accoutrements: bacon, onion, sweet potato fries. Also, Burgers, Fish Fryday, Nana’s Banana bread, cream puffs. I want to buy some banana bread to go. Maybe cream puffs, too. My engagement in everything about Leah and the Fry Truck is so off the charts!

As Leah widens the doorway to her ever expanding story and I meet her mom and ask question after question, I have a wondering. Often, I keep these wonderings to myself. Today, I did not. Perhaps comforted and emboldened by the Birch, I just let the words fall out of me:

Me: Hey, Do you like writing?

Leah: Yes.

Me: Do you want to write your story?

Leah: I do.

Me: Oh. Great. I think you’d be great at it. It’s a great story. I’m a writer.

Leah: You’re a writer?

Nod of head.

Leah: Cool.

Me: I do all kinds of writing. Lots of projects. I’m in the middle of a project right now.

Leah: You are?

Me: Yeah. A couple of times of year I facilitate circles for writers. I mostly meet people and ask them if they want to be part of something, like writing-wise. You might be interested.

Leah: I am.

Me: Cool. They’d like you. I think you’d like them.

What I didn’t say: it’s interesting how you talk about your future. How your future includes all your relationships. You remind me of someone I know. And your engagement with life? With strangers at a chip truck window? With your mom cooking next to you? With your husband and kids who are all part of adapting to a life far away from Calgary and the Ingelwood neighborhood where your mom and you lived? It’s inspiring.

Leah: Mom and I spent six years apart and now we’re next level. Next level of life.

Me: It’s wonderful. Your life is great.

Leah: Becoming a pilot is my retirement plan. Not where I’m responsible for people. You know a Canada Post plane or FedEx. It’ll be expensive and it’ll take awhile, but what am I gonna do? I’m not gonna sit around my house knitting. I am not a knitter.”

Leah: I’m not gonna sit around my house knitting. I am not a knitter.

“Foods Up!” A second sliding window, near the truck’s rear wheels opens. Marcia hands us our food, a fork wrapped in a napkin. “These fly off on their own.”

The smell. Yummmmmmm.

Not these fries, though these do look delicious like FryWayf ries. Their fries were so great, I did not think of taking a photo of them. I only wanted to engage with them hands-on. So…you’ll have to imagine hand cut fries. Although I will replace this photo with one of Leah’s if she sends me one!!!!

My meal is delicious- Sweet Potato Fry poutine, two pieces of Haddock and Fresh Fries shared with Tom. Cheese in all the correct gooey-ness. Dill sauce for the fish and lemon wedges.

We share a picnic table with a couple of local policeman from The Anishnaabeg Police force. They mention the weather has been overcast and cool for weeks, but farther east it’s 20 degrees and sunny. Maybe they want to reassure us we won’t be in rain for a week while we’re paddling. It’s not fun to pack and unpack a wet tent, but once you accept you have no other choice, it’s easy to do.

(In an on-line drawing course with Janice Tanton I learned, *draw what you see, not what you think you see* and *sketch lightly, find the line*.)

I sketch, with beginner level skill, the Fry Truck in my watercolour notebook. I show it to Leah. She hands me some fancy stickers- FryWay 11 stickers. The stickers are AWESOME, but they are tucked away inside a book I cannot reach.

I started out grumpy. I ended up not.

Change happened at a Park. Near Trees. At a FryTruck.

Thank you Leah. Thank you Marcia. Robust. Reliable.

And This Thought from Chogyam Trunpa:

Sacred Names or Swear Words?

Chogyum Trunpa’s Commentary on the slogan: If you can practice even when distracted, you are well trained.

We have all kinds of situations that we have to handle in ordinary life, even states that we are not aware of. Usually, we are not particularly concerned about our existence; we are more concerned about our neurosis and our games. If we are in a very high level of uptightness, as soon as that happens there is not awareness. But we can immediately experience a sense of awareness!
Traditionally, any chaos that came up was regarded as a shout for some kind of holiness or help, blessing, or prayer. In our ordinary, everyday life, each time something unepected suddenly came up, we would say, “Goodness, Look at that,” or we might utter sacred names. That was supposed to be a reminder for awareness. But these days, we never use the situation that way. We just use swear words in the most degrading way.
From Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness, page 86, brought to my attention through a newsletter sign up: CTR Quote of the Week.

What sacred words would you say to remind you of awareness when you are in the midst of chaos? I wonder about the denial of reality which happens when we become angry instead of curious.

I don’t think I have any words right now. OMG, maybe. Sometimes I catch myself saying OMG or all the words. So…those might be my sacred words.

I have sacred images, too. Images which bridge the gap between the unexpected and the accepted/acknowledged.

A rock I’m carrying with me. Out of focus. I’m not sure what I need to do with it yet. Athena likes it.

An image for me is the crow (also the raven and the magpie), because when I see them or hear them, I pay attention to them. I am in an unfolding moment instead of writing or reflecting or narrating a story I’m creating.

This is an example of how I attempt to remain in the body (and the unfolding moment) while writing: I notice wind. I notice sounds of Tom moving about in the car, of a small dog barking far off, of the trembling aspen, the quaking leaves, the noisy tree closest to me, though my immediate friends are the white cedar and red pine. Big, tall trees.
Living through it and recording as I go physically feels like movement. I don’t know the reader’s reaction. I don’t know how the reader might define “remaining in the body”- maybe remaining aware of the body while writing or doing anything.
Here is one way I think of being in the body: I used to dance. I stopped dancing. I now dance.
Round and round or spiral in and spiral out…we each have a pattern, don’t we? The way the cedar leaves are patterned from a great schematic. The way birch trunks are individual expressions and part of the great whole? We have patterns of growth. Mine involve movement. Mine want to experience the ground, the water, the tree, the night sky. Mine want to find the answers to big questions about ways to engage with the rest of the world. My patterns ask, even on the grumpiest days, How do I serve love?

Beauty someone else documented. I’d like to see this up close, woudn’t you?

I’m ending this dispatch 2 days after the writing began, at 1:46 on Sunday, September 17. We will be launching in Temagami tomorrow, September 18, 2023. We are in for some fair to great weather over the next several days and we are adaptable to our route and circumstance.

When we return, we’ll be meeting with five others up at Hap and Andrea Wilson’s EcoLodge at Cabin Falls. Truly something special. Gratitude for this opportunity. And I intend a reliable and robust response to the challenge of all that lay ahead.

I have been writing small pieces for months as practice for this piece, weaving together the forward moment with a brief touch from the supporting memory, an experiencing of the felt emotion, and the return to the forward moment. I think of in waves. I try to remain attentive, connected, noticing. I’m curious to know the limits of exploring the present moment, of creating with the present moment. As a warrior, it seems wise to create the conditions for sanity and love. Much gratitude for this day.

Much Love, Mar’ce