Ghost Lake. A few days before Solstice. A holy time. A few days retreat before the celebrations with family and friends. .
I breathe in cool air and breathe out, slowly; relax the forehead, soften the eyes, relax the jaw, the tongue, the throat. I swallow. The back of my throat aches. I’m fighting a cold. I breathe in cool air and breathe out, slowly; relax, relax the shoulders, the heart area front, the heart area back. Relax the area between the shoulder blades; ice melting to water, water evaporating to gas. This is helpful. This area is tight. Ice to water, water to gas. As the muscles let go, I remember my flying dreams as a black bird, a raven. Pleasant.
My gaze is in front of me. I hear traffic passing over the bridge. I let my attention open wide. I am here. This is my practice: experience the body, experience nature.
I look up. Mountains rise in front of me; mountains sculpted into triangle peaks and crowns, slabs of rock layers forced sideways and reaching up, and frozen-in-time flat-topped mountains standing guard. Thank you. Thank you.
My body yearns for a connection to the earth. I breathe in cool air and breathe out slowly, relax the torso, the belly, the hips and thighs, the calves. Feel the feet root into the ground.
Lovely. The center of each foot blooms, as if a prairie crocus opens its petals.
Oh, hello, mama.
Snow rests in bowl-shaped mountain hearts, fills veins and arteries of rock crag and canyon and though I can’t see them from here, the banks of the nearby glacial lakes, (Minnewanka) and rivers, The Bow and Ghost Rivers. Just below me, the Bow waters flow east towards Calgary through Ghost Dam, one of several dam projects east of the Rockies, changing the flow of water and, some might say, spirit, in this area of the world. The Ghost River, off to the north from where I stand, ends here at Ghost Lake
I am peace inside though the world is anything but peaceful. Children are harmed, some of them dying in armed conflict, suffering starvation, lack of care, lack of acceptance for the colour of their skin, the way they dress, the pronouns they prefer. Children. Violence. Aggression.
I breathe in the suffering, remembering my own child self– scared, terrified, curled in fetal position. The physical feeling of fear rises in my torso, my heart tightens, the shoulders freeze up. I picture them in my mind’s eye. I notice the urge to shift position, to look away. The grief spills through me. I breathe. I breathe. See. Notice. All lives have value. I breathe out and relax, relax, relax. Peace. Through pain. This is my practice.
“Your suffering matters. Your journey is not over. Travel safe.” I say this to my own small child self, the one who sought refuge in a circle of oak trees near a river, watching dust motes filter through the late afternoon light. Tears come. I repeat my words. “Your suffering matters. Your journey is not over. Travel safe.” This, for the ones in the field of all beings. If they hear me, they may stay awake, they may take the journey with eyes open.
My breath rises and falls, rises and falls. Wind whizzes dry snow over the surface of the lake. A skate sail surfer zigs and zags in the gusts of the wind. Catches an edge. Falls. Stands again.
I pick up my journal. I write.
James Hector, surgeon and hunting expedition leader on the Palliser Expedition in the late 1850s, first wrote about Ghost River, as populated by ghosts. Hector may or may not have been told or understood the nuance, the context, the fullest perspective of ten thousand years of Indigenous engagement with this land.
I don’t see ghosts. I feel them. I sense them. We communicate. I don’t really know how. I’ve been reading about time. Despite my devotion to comprehension of written text, I can’t explain exactly how, but time doesn’t exist. We have created it. Humans make containers, systems. I’m interested in what’s outside the container.