a creed

This is the personal creed of Dr. J.W. Grant MacEwan. I put this up on the bulletin board in my office to remind myself to always endeavour to leave things better than I found them. To know every day that my dependence on the land is fundamental. And to help myself not to settle for an ideology that is handed to me; rather to insist upon searching for one.

Dr. MacEwan wrote extensively on matters of conservation and the truly human stories of how Western Canada came to be the way we know it today. He made a massive contribution to the mythology of this region. He believed that we must nurture sustainable relationships with our environment and with each other in order to innovate. Also, he liked horses.

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I believe instinctively in a God for whom I am prepared to search.

I believe it is an offence against the God of Nature for me to accept any hand-me-down, man-defined religion or creed without the test of reason.  I believe no man dead or alive knows more about God
than I can know by searching.

I believe that the God of Nature must be without prejudice, with exactly the same concern for all His children, and that the human invokes no more, no less of fatherly love than the beaver or sparrow.

I believe I am an integral part of the environment and, as a good subject, I must establish an enduring relationship with my surroundings.  My dependence upon the land is fundamental.

I believe destructive waste and greedy exploitation are sins.

I believe the biggest challenge is in being a helper rather than a destroyer of the treasures in Nature's storehouse, a conserver, a husbandman and partner in caring for the Vineyard.

I accept, with apologies to Albert Schweitzer, "a Reverence for Life" and all that is of the Great Spirit's creation.

I believe morality is not complete until the individual holds all of the Great Spirit's creatures in brotherhood and has compassion for all.  A fundamental concept of Good consists of working to preserve all creatures with feeling and the will to live.

I am prepared to stand before my Maker, the Ruler of the entire Universe, with no other plea than that I have tried to leave things in His Vineyard better than I found them.

Dr. J.W. Grant MacEwan, 1969

coyote

At night, I listen to coyotes. I can feel them coming closer. As winter wears on, they are drawn inward to our little patch of civilization in their wide wilderness. The other night as I fed the horses, I could hear their cries. They sounded so close, I was surprised I couldn't see them. The dog ran back and forth at the edge of the horse pen, barking. His warnings made no difference. The coyotes called anyway. Have you ever heard them? Do you know that strange cry? It almost sounds like children screaming. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

And when I returned to my house, the dog suddenly took off barking up the road. In the moonlight and shadows, I couldn't see where he was headed, until his barks turned to whines and I saw him running back towards me. Something followed him, but stopped dead in its tracks when I stepped out onto the road. It had silvery fur and crouched low to the ground. The dog paced back and forth in front of me, barking.

This is not the first time I have seen one. This fall, I encountered one while out riding my horse. The coyote stood in the middle of the road through our back pasture and stared at me. I was confident that he would be scared off by my presence, but he didn't move. Finally, unnerved by his steady patience and unblinking stare, I turned to leave. When I looked back over my shoulder, he was standing right where I'd left him, watching me. Waiting for me to leave.

This morning I wrote a hasty, ill-constructed poem about these creatures I find myself sharing my home with. I have been thinking a lot about them. About their society. How a group of wild dogs might act. Do they understand the barking of the dog when he warns them to stay away? Do they recognize him as one of their own, just with different fur and a deeper voice? How close will they come?

Sometimes I stand on the deck of my house and listen to them calling to each other in the night and I wonder what their voices mean. Why do they sing together? I stare into the dark tree line where the crying comes from. I never see them there.

I hope this poem will turn into something better.

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coyote

sometimes i think it’s just you and me out here
mostly when your cries sound like children
somewhere close by    and desperate

hungry

i stand at the edge of a wilderness and look for you
but you are much too clever to be seen
are you scared?    or are you sure of things?

on the road where we met: you stared   
unmoving    until i moved first
i know you watched until i was out of sight

and i must never take for granted the patience of a wild thing.

before january 31st

Before the end of January:

1. Sew the four projects I bought fabric for on Wednesday. (They're really easy projects.)
2. Ride a horse.
3. Write a poem.
4. Buy a calendar.

Seems simple enough.

new years day

I need a calendar.

And a studio space for writing and making.

And to miraculously stop being so messy.

And to have more energy, and to feel more comfortable.

Beyond thinking a little about what I need more of in my life, I haven't come to any decisions for new years resolutions. I can't decide what I'm willing to commit to. (Probably "be more decisive" should have been on my resolutions list for the last ten years at least.)

I guess, here's something tentative:

1. Read every day.
2. Create something once a month.
3. Start riding again -- including taking some lessons.
4. Organize and personalize my office at work so it feels less like some generic person's office and more like my own happy, inspiring workspace.

And I want to say something about cleaning more, but really, I don't want to clean more. I just want to suddenly find myself in a nicer, more organized environment. As if by magic.

As for the obligatory reflections on the year just passed: I hardly remember 2012 at all. I feel very far away from it already. We drove past our old house last night and it looked so perfect and familiar and, at the same time, foreign. Our lives are so very different from the ones we had living there. Not better or worse, I think -- just so completely different. For a minute I wanted to drive around back, let myself in and go to bed in our old room with all of our things there. But we don't live there anymore.

I wonder if we ever will again.

a winter's night

Winter is cold and dark. Out here in the country, on cold, dark nights, I feel very far away from everything. Like a pioneer who has only her family and her horse the home she tries to make comfortable to survive.

I am beginning, now, to feel the effects of isolation that living in the country bring. Even when people visit -- my sister and our old friend came for coffee just yesterday afternoon. Once they're gone I feel impossibly far again. When I am hungry, there is nothing to do but make do with whatever scraps of food I can find. I am used to living in the centre of everything. If I ever was hungry or lonely, I could go anywhere to find company and good food. Now it's just the two of us (and the dog) making ramshackle dinners out of strange leftovers and putting on snowpants as a part of every day's outfit.

It's true: I wear snowpants every day. I just can't stand the stinging feeling of the cold through my jeans every morning, afternoon and evening while I go to feed the horses. Meanwhile my relatively short-coated dog ploughs headfirst through snowbanks with unbridled glee. My horse has icicles on his eyelashes. I am sure he remembers a time when he was brought into a warm barn to thaw out, be brushed, ridden in a warm arena, fed, dried and brushed again before being tucked into warm winter blankets and returned to his pen. Now he has only his shaggy winter coat to protect him. There is no warm place for him to go, here.

I wonder how I'll feel in the spring. When my wonderful world of aspen forests and wide fields opens up again to greenness and warmth. Will I feel differently?

Christmas gifts

There is a lot to do before Christmas.

Besides re-vamping my horse feed program and attempting for the first time to wean a foal from his mother's milk (is my life weird?), I am once again caught up in the insanity of making all of my Christmas gifts. This will be the third year.

This year, though, I've been away for much of the two months leading up to Christmas, so I've scaled back. If I didn't, I would go insane from the stress of frantically learning to be a better sewer, baker, candlestick-maker (literally). This year I've made sure to include at least one item that I hand-made, but have allowed myself to purchase meaningful objects to fill in the gaps.

Lately I've been missing the city. Probably for its convenience when running so many Christmas-related errands. But I also think about my neighbourhood, the familiar shops and restaurants. My friend's pub. Our group of friends. Drinking coffee in good coffeeshops, walking the dog to the store to pick up a few things. Our small house and its innate coziness.

But this morning as I walked from breakfast with my coworkers back to my house to get in my truck, the sun was lighting the treetops with the most beautiful golden, silver-edged light. The frost on the branches glowed and the stark outline of the forest softened into light. The moment was a gift.

I must learn to be content where I am. To stop constantly mining the past for better times. During the time that we lived in that little house, I thought constantly of the time before that. I miss the feeling of being swept up in the right now, a feeling I've only had three times in my life. Each of those times was when I was fully engrossed in a new community, when I was making new friends I knew would be part of my life for a long time, when I was growing and felt loved and felt important. I miss all of those times equally. And that's just the problem: what about this time?

I've been given a wonderful gift out here in the country. I will endeavour not to waste it.

winter weekend's eve

This morning brought a bright white fog. This winter is so tone-on-tone. White on white on white on grey. The inside of my farm truck frosts up. The farm dog's black fur was edged with white frost this morning when he joined me for our morning ritual of moving the horses out of the pens where they spend all night staying warm by eating hay.

It is cold out, but not too cold. Not impossible.

There are so many chores to do. Hay bales to be thrown down out of the loft into the back of my truck and distributed. An oat bin whose lid has blown off and has filled with snow. Beet pulp and molasses and new halters to be unloaded from the back of my car.

Today I received three wonderful pieces of mail. The first was a Christmas card and letter from dear friends who live in a house nestled into a hillside in southern Alberta. They are going about their daily life on their farm: caring for horses, collecting eggs from the coop. And then an envelope of two letters from a friend and past roommate who lives downtown. Her life is so different from theirs, but the common thread seems to be: we are all just trying to get our work done and be happy. And we've all got varying levels of success. But I worry about her, sometimes. The third envelope held gifts that same friend made me this spring. A small, handmade notebook and a handmade card that doubles as a coaster (I hadn't thought to use it as one, but she wrote, ps: you can also use this card as a coaster for your beer). I am so lucky to have such a friend. Her gentle skill with paper and fabric is such a gift.

Now I wonder what I will send to her. What handmade treasures I can find in my home out here in the wilderness to bring countryside to her downtown apartment.

Also, there's this: tonight my sisters and mom are coming to sleep over at my house. They are romanticized by my country dwelling. I am so happy to have them here. Their willingness to come assuages my fear that no one will ever visit me out here, that I will feel lonely and isolated, and so removed from the life I created in my busy city community.

I hold in my heart the kind of excitement kids feel on Christmas Eve. It's good to feel this way.