Then I discovered how easy it is to export content from one blog to another . . . Hooray! I consolidated all of the posts I felt were worthwhile from this blog with everything I ‘ve posted since June on the other blog and they have become one . . . so from now on I am over at the other blog for good: The Forest Garden

On the practical side, what made the morning really perfect was a call from our tractor salesman first thing, telling us he would be here tomorrow morning with the  snow-blower attachment we’ve been waiting for since the snow started falling weeks ago . I think we’re going to need it this year and the hours of time saved will be appreciated and savored with each snowfall. It will, of course, disturb this perfect silence  (slightly, Kermit the Green Tractor purrs like a kitten). . . but far more briefly than our current multi-hour blade/bucket snow clearing arrangements . . . yes, the trials of northern living.

Moving on from packing crates . . .

I only have one small area devoted entirely to books, a modest sized bookcase, but it’s the only one of its kind and much more civilized than  the leaning tower of packing crates I got by with for years.

It's a jungle in here. Impossible to get a photo without greenery getting in the way.

So you can see, not a lot of books for a book lover. I used to have many, many more, especially back in the day when I had the dangerous occupation of working in a bookshop in downtown Victoria . . . but I’ve managed to pare down. They take up so much room and making another bookcase would be another crazy 100s of hours of work  (no Ikea is not the answer, read ‘Cheap’ by Ellen Ruppell Shell, one of my packing crate books,  if you don’t already know why)  And if books are just sitting there on the shelf with no one reading them, what’s the point?  As the Permaculture expression goes, unused resources are pollution. I used to feel a good deal of comfort in being surrounded by books. Now, for the most part, I just see them as clutter like any other, so it’s reference books I tend to hang on to.

But there are things in there I can’t bring myself to get rid of. Books that belonged to my grandfather, grandmother and great-grandmother for example:

This shelf seems to hold all the history

I’ve got the dictionary my grandfather brought with him when he left France in the late 30s. It looks like it’s been around the world, and all across the wild prairie before the comforts of modern travel:

Then there is the poetry book my great-uncle gave to my grandmother when they were young teenagers.  Just the thought of a 13-year-old giving his younger sister a book of popular poetry for Christmas seems antiquated. I can’t see that happening these days:

Various textbooks that belonged to my grandmother and her brother. The bottom one, Alberta Public School Arithmetic Book I, 1924, is a bit sobering. It belonged to my great-uncle,  and is proof that the Alberta school curriculum, still one of the most thorough in Canada, had slid precipitously downhill by the time I went to school there. The red volume is my favourite:  Aesop’s Fables, published in 1884 with “upwards of 200 illustrations” that belonged to my great-grandmother when she was a girl in Ontario.

On the other half of the shelf we have some of the tools that belonged to my husband’s great-grandfather who like him, and his grandfather, was a cabinetmaker.  The tools are all in perfect condition and, with the exception of the decidedly non-metric measuring tape, are still pressed into service  from time to time.

And the textbooks, and ‘Handbook of Empire Timbers’ that accompany the tools are fascinating. I was just perusing ‘Building Construction: Advanced Course’ “A Text Book On The Details And Principles Of Modern Construction For the Use of Students and Practical Men” London, 1925, and am considering moving it over to the bedside reading packing crate as it is  oddly fascinating yet dull as dishwater, perfect for inducing sleep.

Most of these books are partly read as I only read a few pages before falling asleep, though some of them are there because of their eternal re-readability, others to remind me that I just haven’t got to them yet. Whether I want a few words of wisdom from the Dalai Lama, a quick taste of poetry,  a story from Chekhov, some advice on raising pigs (you’ll notice guides to raising various livestock scattered throughout this book tour), or to revisit a favourite chapter from Clarissa Pinkola Estes (that’s the yellowed book with the creased  spine that I’ve read more often than any other book I own and have had the longest), it’s all there at my fingertips.

The Sarah Susanka book is one of my current favourites. I really enjoy everything Jack Kornfield or Stephen Levine. Now that I think of it, those Mary Olivers probably should have been included in the preceding  “couldn’t live without” post. ‘ Cheap’ was entertaining but I’m ready to give it away to the first person who shows a spark of interest. My father-in-law sent me ‘My Life on a Hillside Allotment’ and as you will see in the next post, I have trouble giving away books that were given to me as gifts, even if they were picked up at a car boot sale for 20p.

First of all, I decided to narrow down to the few books I feel I couldn’t live without, in the sense that my life as it is would actually be difficult without them. Here they are:

These are the ones I would miss on a day-to-day basis:

Plants of Northern British Columbia

Mammals of British Columbia

Canoeing and Kayaking BC’s Central Interior

British Columbia: A Natural History

Gotta Hike BC

Bev Gray’s Boreal Herbal

I guess that says a thing or two about my priorities.

A closer look at British Columbia: A Natural History:

The Spruce Kingdom! This is where I live!

. . . and this is the kind of day we're having. Just saw a snowshoe hare this morning.

This is one of those captivatingly readable blogs that just grab you and pull you in and really make you think.  There is valuable,  hard-earned wisdom here and a lot of love.

And I love how she describes herself in  her profile:  “I’m here for a reason and it’s not to go shopping. My quest is to discover a life which reconnects to what is real true and beautiful.” The words of a soul sister! No wonder I have stayed in touch with her and visited her for almost 20 years,  ever since I met her while working on a magical organic farm on an island off the West Coast of Canada in 1995

I had to post about this blog beacause I wouldn’t want you to miss the chance to read it. I do believe it will be a worthwhile journey and you can begin by clicking the link below:

Angel Wings and Herb Tea

Organic Farming on The Gulf Islands . . . many years ago

If it means I learned a great deal about the country I visited, the people who lived there, and myself, then yes.  After walking anywhere between 16 and 25 km most days I returned exhausted and worn out with a  sprained wrist acquired halfway up a soggy volcano and recovering from a fierce stomach flu.

 But it as worth it, and here’s why:

We need to travel. If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; our ears don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. Don’t let yourself become one of those people. The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable conspire to keep you from taking the risks the traveller has to take. But if you take them, you will never regret your choice. To be sure, there will be times when you stand alone on an empty road in an icy rain, or when you are ill from fever in a rented bed. But as the pains of the moment will come, so too will they fall away. In the end, you will be so much richer, so much stronger, so much clearer, so much happier, and so much a better person that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge you have gained.

from Letters to My Son, by Kent Nerburn

Yes, I had a good trip. I’m glad to be home, but even more happy that we went and grateful for the time we spent there . . . and the walking really was fabulous.

The thing is though, just look at that photo above. That was taken in New Plymouth on Easter Sunday when we had nothing else to do but enjoy the town’s lovely coastal walkway. Had I been at home I probably would have missed that perfect moment because I would have been indoors “getting something done” or worse yet, sitting here in front of the computer. Being without the internet or a computer for the entire trip was, after a few initial days of withdrawal, surprisingly liberating, and I don’t want to spend anymore time in front of a computer now than I have to, so I won’t be blogging much any more, this may even be my last post.  It’s been fun and rewarding in some ways but there is a sky full of stars and a full moon tonight and this is first warm evening so far this year. No matter how entertaining and fascinating blogging and other virtual adventures  may be, they can’t feed the soul the way the beauty of nature always has and always will.

Thanks for reading.

Seriously? And nothing but more snow in the forecast well into March . . .

At least someone's enjoying it

I have a final exam to study for that is 10 days away, a much-anticipated (like over a decade of anticipation) trip to New Zealand that is 15 days away to plan and pack for, more of the infernal tiling to finish off NOW because the contents of the laundry room and bathroom are strewn throughout the house and the toilet sitting in a snowdrift on  the back porch is adding a bit too much local hillbilly colour to the place . . . but I all want to do is sleep 12 hours a night and after zombying through my work and eating and attending to the basics of living I have no brain or muscle power left for any of it.

The Great Tiling Project is moving along at a snail's pace when we find the time and has become slightly less miserable as we become speedier and more skilled, but it is still very hard, finicky work

I had chosen the tile with my many houseplants in mind and they do look pretty trailing across the floor

Northern winters sap the life blood out of you . . . of course, northern summers sap the life blood out of you too, but it’s the  mosquitoes doing the sapping. There are  two weeks somewhere in May and June, after the ground has defrosted and before the mosquito larvae have hatched out; that’s when I (I hope) will remember why I live here.

I was attracted to this title because I am terribly disappointed by the deliberate ugliness of the world we have created. Environmental destruction,  the violence, perversity, crudeness, and inanity that passes for entertainment, the noise, the fumes, the cheapness,  artifice,  utilitarianism and greed. We have created an ugly civilization and an ugly culture on every level.

When, in the first section of this book, the author stated, “When you look at postmodern society it is absolutely astounding how much ugliness we are willing to endure,” I knew I’d found a kindred spirit.

But the book didn’t take the course I expected. It didn’t dissect and analyze the ugliness of our world and then make suggestions on how to solve the problem through a renewed commitment to beauty. This book turned out to be much more and much better than that.  It was more of a guided tour and homage to beauty and a bit of a dusting off and rediscovering of the places where true beauty lives. It was a gripping journey that brought together poetry and thought on beauty throughout the ages, and examined how it infuses our lives, brings us to life and, indeed, is the best of who we are.

All of this was delivered with the fine storytelling, eloquence, grace and a delightful curiosity of the author, punctuated by the occasional unexpected stab of  humour.  I savoured every minute of it.  The book explores all the expected places such as landscape, nature, light, colour, and music but it goes so much further and deeper than that in exploring the true sources of human beauty  – from the imagination to woundedness to reverence - and its inevitable manifestations of graciousness, truth, balance, proportion, dignity, respect and integrity.

As it is difficult to write a concise synopsis of such a sumptuous feast,  I will instead offer some random quotations that I hope will pique your curiosity and lead you to enjoy this wonderful work  in its entirety:

Quoted from William Stafford’s ‘Crossing Unmarked Snow’:

The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying the things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing the things you do not have to hear dulls your hearing; and the things you know before you hear them – these are who you are and this is the reason you are in the world.

On the beauty of nature:

The beauty of the earth is the first beauty and our difficulty with the earth is that we are usually so busy and so taken up with our lives that  we rarely seem to acknowledge that we are actually here at all.

The memories of nature are within us but each of us also in our bodies and minds and thoughts and souls are very unique masterpieces that the earth has created . . . we are earthen vessels that hold immense treasures.

One of the most tender ways of awakening to the sense of beauty is to really waken up to the beauty of nature.

On wilderness:

I suppose because they are so much themselves, wild territories remind us and recall us to the unexamined territories of our own hearts and minds and they open up places within us that we don’t even know are there.

On being human:

One of the lovely things about being a human is that we are called in each moment to bring ourselves to birth.

Part of the difficulty of our times is that we have reduced the magnificent adventure of being a human being to endless, wearisome projects of self-improvement and self-analysis according to the flattest and most boring maps that could be made.

On the beauty of the imagination:

The imagination is infinitely kinder than the mind. The imagination works naturally from the in-between world, that invisible territory, and it seeks out the edges of the unknown to find out the thing that neither the mind nor the eye ever attend to.

One of the most sacred duties in any life is to honorably imagine yourself, to bring the full depth and care and luminosity to imagining the person that you actually are. The depth of who you are also depends on the depth of your ability to imagine yourself.

On Beauty and the experience thereof:

Beauty is not a deadener but a quickener and it alerts and awakens our heart to what is true and good and unified.

The experience of beauty is like a homecoming. When we feel and see and touch the beautiful we feel that we are at one with ourselves because in some subtle and secret way beauty meets the needs of the soul.

On glamour:

One of the fatal habits of minds which has become common in our times is to mistake glamour for beauty. Glamour is a highly fickle and commercially driven enterprise that contributes to the humdrum.

In calling for an “imaginative restoration of the mystery and beauty of experience”:

One of the tragedies of Western culture at the moment is how poor and thin experience has become. . . We say ‘to have an experience.’ Experience has become a possession and a product . . . people rifle their experiences like a scavenger rifles a dustbin.

In quoting philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer:

The integrity and truth of a society is determined by its willingness and ability to engage contradiction.

On “Creating beauty out of woundedness”:

Divest yourself of outside explanation and voices and attend to the particular shape that the wounds take in your life . . . your places of greatest illumination and most elegant poise are the places where you’ve been badly wounded. . . . out of woundedness comes strength that has been tested.

On the importance of old-fashioned courtesy:

Courtesy is the secret unacknowledged heart of all civility.

On the beauty of self-respect:

 . . . proud of the beauty we do not own but has been given to us.

My personal favourite, in the discussion of music:

I’ve often wondered if a deaf alien were to visit an orchesteral concert . . .

And, ultimately:

Whenever we awaken to beauty, we are helping to make God present in the world.

The eternal in a human being is a light sleeper and will awaken at the slightest rustle.

A Final World: Meditation is a Pathway to Becoming, not an Attempt at Self-Improvement
It should also be noted that meditation is not a route to “self-improvement.” It is an exercise in non-judgement intended to make you realize that there is actually nothing wrong with you and that, as Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it, “as long as you’re still breathing, you’re doing more right than you’re doing wrong.” Meditation is not intended to make you a “better person” or anything other than what you already are. To quote Mr. Kabat-Zinn one last time, from his audio book Mindfulness for Beginners, “Don’t come to meditation practice hoping to become Mother Theresa or the Dalai Lama. You don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming Mother Theresa or the Dalai Lama. The only person you have any hope of becoming is yourself.”

And perhaps that is the most exquisite gift offered by meditation practice – the opportunity to become your truest, most authentic self. This is not only one of life’s greatest freedoms but perhaps, as the Dalai Lama himself has been known to argue, the real reason why we are here : to unearth our beautiful selves from beneath the rubble and, in doing so, move from anger, sadness and aloneness to compassion, kindness and oneness – a truly holistic approach to health and healing that can expand beyond ourselves to encompass our fragile, interconnected world.

 Who can learn to meditate and benefit from meditation?

Anyone who is ready and willing. Meditation could be the most accessible healing modality that exists. As long as you are still breathing, you can learn mindfulness-based meditation. It is by no means necessary to seek out a “guru” or a religious sect to learn to meditate effectively, though learning from an experienced meditation teacher may be helpful. There are plenty of excellent books and audiobooks that teach meditation very effectively through guided meditations and instruction. There are many meditation centres that offer workshops and retreats. In particular, throughout the world there are the well known and highly respected Vipassana Meditation Centres offering intensive 10-day training retreats in silent mindfulness-based insight meditation. These courses are offered year-round and free of charge, with participants being asked, upon finishing the retreat and leaving the centre, to make a donation in proportion to how they feel the course has benefited them. In this way, grateful past participants fund new students coming into the course, providing the volunteer-run centres with the funds to feed and shelter the next participants for the duration of their stay at the centre.

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Pain Management programs are now being offered in many clinics and hospitals. Enrolment in these programs is based upon physician referral.

There are many opportunities and avenues for learning meditation and deepening one’s meditative skills. All that is required is a willingness to try it and see what happens. Unlike so many health modalities, there really are no side effects. The worst that can happen is that you try it and decide it isn’t for you at this point in time.

Meditation is also universally compatible with all other healing techniques. Not only can it be an excellent adjunct to drugs and surgery, as so many in the medical mindfulness-based programs have found, but it can enhance any alternative therapy and can be combined with other therapies as part of the practice. In The Mindfulness Solution to Pain Dr. Jackie Gardner-Nix, a chronic pain specialist, explains that participants in her Mindfulness-Based Pain Management Programs at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and St. Micheal’s Hospital are encouraged to participate in both art therapy and creative visualization to take them deeper into the healing process offered by the mindfulness they are developing. Aromatherapy has been combined with meditation throughout the ages, with Frankincense being the scent of choice to sharpen focus and attention. Bach Flower Essences would be the perfect companion on anyone’s meditative journey as one’s awareness begins to grow and hitherto compulsively avoided memories and challenges are faced. Herbs to support recovery from chronic stress and adrenal exhaustion, such as relaxing nervines, adaptogens, and endocrine tonics can be nurturing green allies as one starts to practice meditation and physical rebalancing begins.

How are meditation and mindfulness beneficial to health?

Though the health-promoting effects of meditation can be diffuse and far-reaching, of paramount importance is its ability to rebalance the autonomic (involuntary) nervous system by increasing the activity of the parasympathetic branch (the division of the autonomic nervous system responsible for relaxation) while calming the chronically overstimulated sympathetic branch. This results in slowing and regulation of the pulse, slowing and deepening of respiration, decrease in blood pressure, increased muscle relaxation and release of tension.

Meditation also revitalizes the Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis. This is the hormonal system, or feedback loop, that responds to stress and prepares us to react to a threat in a way that will hopefully ensure our survival. When faced with a stressor, the hypothalamus in the centre of our brain releases corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF), which stimulates the pituitary gland to release adrenocortictropic hormone (ACTH) into the blood stream. ACTH travels through the blood stream to the adrenal glands, which sit atop the kidneys. The adrenals then release the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline that prepare us to fight off an attacker or flee from danger. Unfortunately, the HPA axis cannot discriminate between imminent risks to our lives such as sudden severe injury or physical attack, and non-life threatening stressors ranging from interpersonal struggles to exam anxiety. So, a whole lot of overreacting tends to go on, and this overreactivity has far-reaching detrimental effects on our health.

When we are chronically exposed to stressors or fail to recover sufficiently from past trauma, our bodies remain to one degree or another engaged in the fight/flight/fright mode of the sympathetic nervous system, which overstimulates the HPA axis. When this happens our digestive and immune systems, physical growth, tissue repair and even excretion of waste materials all function suboptimally. As far as our bodies are concerned, there’s a life or death battle going on and things like fighting off a virus or digesting a meal are of little importance.

Of course, the HPA axis cannot carry on forever releasing stress hormones and our body systems cannot tolerate being forever on high alert. Eventually, our supply of hormones becomes depleted and adrenal exhaustion ensues. Not only does our “stress hormone” cortisol become depleted, leading to an inability to handle stress in a functional way, but so too do our endorphins, our pain-killing feel-good hormones that are chemically similar to opiate medications. Endorphin release is an inherent part of the stress response, explaining why one often feels no pain at the moment of injury and why people can sometimes even run on a broken leg without feeling pain. The endorphins are released to give us, as injured, threatened animals, a fighting chance of getting ourselves to a safe place out of harm’s way before debilitating pain sets in.

The end result of all this, when our stress response and the HPA axis collapse from overstimulation, can be illness, chronic pain, depression, and plain old “giving up.” Other symptoms of chronic stress include aggression, anxiety, blood sugar imbalance, susceptibility to infection, impaired wound healing, impaired bowel function, digestive disorders, and clouded thinking.

By engaging and increasing the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system through meditation, the body can physically relearn what it feels like to be at peace, to be truly relaxed again. The longer we meditate, the more conditioned for relaxation we become and overstressed body systems can begin to rebalance, setting the stage for wellness and healing.

Meditation is known to increase melatonin and serotonin production while decreasing cortisol production, to decrease the risk of developing chronic health conditions, while often significantly reducing the symptoms of already diagnosed chronic illnesses, to decrease stress, sharpen mental faculties, improve memory, lessen insomnia, and regulate emotional lability. It is quite typical for chronic pain sufferers to be able to significantly decrease and sometimes discontinue their pain medications after embarking on mindfulness-based pain reduction programs. In one interesting study it was proven that psoriasis sufferers being treated with UV light therapy and simultaneously exposed to guided mindfulness meditation had symptom improvement at four times the rate of the control group who received the same light therapy without the meditation component. This study helped provide an evidence base for what those leading mindfulness-based pain and stress reduction programs already knew – that meditation speeds healing and recovery.

 What, then, is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is maintaining conscious awareness, moment by moment, of the events unfolding both within us and around us. In Meditation for Optimum Health Jon Kabat-Zinn, veteran meditation teacher and founder of the University of Massachusetts Medical School Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Clinic describes meditation as, “Paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” He goes on to define mindfulness as, “Living your life as if it really mattered, moment by moment, tapping into the full depth of your beauty.” Meditation is time taken out of each day to diligently practice heightening your awareness; mindfulness is holding onto that awareness, taking it to the streets, and living it as you go about the rest of your day. This is how meditation comes to affect the quality of our efforts, our activities and our interactions with others, and how it strengthens our resolve to make the most of our circumstances and the opportunities we are offered.

  The Role of Meditation in the Buddhist Tradition

Though there is no reason that meditation need be anything but secular, it is worth considering that meditation is the foundation of Buddhist spiritual practice. A Buddhist definition of meditation might be to liberate ourselves from the attachments that cause human suffering. Buddhism is built upon what are called The Four Noble Truths. The first is that suffering is an inevitable part of life. The second is that attachment (the inability to accept change) is the cause of suffering. The third is that an end to suffering is attainable in this lifetime. The fourth noble truth is the pathway that leads out of suffering, the so-called “Middle Way” that steers clear of extremes and seeks to find peace at the centre.

At the heart of the Middle Way is the practice of meditation, and through consistent practice we find that meditation is much more than the simple technique described in the first paragraph of this essay. When practised consistently over time, experiencing each moment afresh and anew, examining it with non-judgemental interest as it presents itself to us, meditation can feel like threading an endless, timeless luminous necklace, each moment another bright bead to add to the string. As this perspective develops, one may find that meditation is no longer an elusive concept to wrap one’s head around, and that it is no longer merely a nebulous “something” to be practised over and over again. Rather, one may find that it has become a Way of Being in the world, and that way of being is mindfulness.

  Shining Light into the Darkness: Meditation as Holistic Medicine for the Body-Mind

Though I have discussed in previous posts the mental benefits of meditation and will later separately discuss  the physical benefits, it must always be remembered that our minds and bodies function as one cohesive entity. Illness, pain and disease may have either psychological or organic causes, or both, but regardless of cause, the resultant illness is just as much a reality in both spheres, whether it be an affective illness such as depression, or a physical torment such as back pain. Depression ravages the body as surely as the consequences of back pain can ravage the mind. Whether the disease is psychological or organic, affective or physical, our minds – both conscious and unconscious – have a very powerful effect on the course of illness, the severity of pain, and the duration of suffering.

Through mindfulness meditation we gain liberating, life-enhancing, health-promoting insight into the nature of our minds and the workings of our bodies – for it is not only thoughts and emotions that we gain awareness of, but also body sensations. Taken together, these new insights provide us with pathways to change and healing and open the door to living in wholeness, regardless of our symptoms or lack thereof.

We discover that, for the most part, our inner reality, both mental and physical, is one of reflexive reactions we’ve learned over the course of our lifetime, usually at a very young age. We also discover that some of our strongest, most compelling automatic reactions were learned in response to trauma and stress and not only do they no longer serve us well, but they can lead to patterns of imbalance and ill health.

The past/future oriented mindset of typical, everyday distracted human consciousness is motivated consciously by regret, worry, fear, and desire; unconsciously by such powerful, unflattering forces as repressed rage and sadness, primitive narcissism, unmet dependency needs, and deep-seated feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. Because it is crammed full of that which the ego believes to be unbearably painful or incredibly dangerous and all that is totally unacceptable to us on a conscious level, the unconscious can be an ugly and highly toxic place. It can wreak havoc in our lives and on our health if we don’t get our flashlights out, bravely inspect the damage, face the facts, and set about some healing repair work.

Thus, one of the descriptions of meditation might be “the fine art of paying attention to the clues that float up from the unconscious.” Meditation shines light upon the inner darkness that has hitherto haunted us. In his book Heal Thyself: Lessons on Mindfulness in Medicine, Saki Santorelli refers to this process in meditation as, “a willingness to travel like Dante or Persephone into and through the dark unknown, and only then to emerge into a previously unsuspected fullness.”