Paying attention

Such a change from yesterday.  Yesterday, beside the Rideau Canal, young women from the University of Ottawa stretched on the greening grass, like lilies in the warm sun.  Today, when I walked down to the canal to eat my lunch beside the path, I had to zip my jacket against the damp chill.

The Ottawa Race Weekend comes up near the end of May, and people have begun to train seriously.  As I ate my sandwich and savored segments of a clementine, I watched the runners passing on the path.  We have some very serious runners in Ottawa.  And some aging runners.  I estimate the mean age somewhere in the forties, with a few men well into their sixties.  I suppose that I shouldn't judge:  me, at fifty, still pretending to bike like I'm sixteen, while ignoring the chronic twinge in my cranky right knee.

At the next bench over, a young man sat peering at a blackberry or cell phone, his thumbs dancing on the keypad.  I wondered what had brought him down to the canal.  Had he come to relax?  Or, like me, to watch the world pass by?  He didn't have a lunch, a book, a companion.  Why come to the canal, I wondered, just to spend the time peering at a tiny screen, oblivious to everything else?  After ten or fifteen minutes, he stood up, slipped the gadget into his pocket, and walked away briskly toward Laurier Street.

I see the same behaviour on City busses.  I love riding the bus.  I can think of no better place to watch people.  The young and the old, the mingling cultures.  Flirtings and snubs.  Smiles and glimpes of quiet desperation.  I've watched a businessman slip a mickey from his brief case, take a sip, and then cast me a wary glance at me as he slipped the bottle back.  I've listened to mothers and their children singing "the wheels on the bus", and watched young women lean back and snuggle into their boyfriends' shoulder.  I've ridden the neary-empty bus on dark, rainy nights and wondered at the destination of my unnamed companions.

It puzzles me, therefore, why so many people immediately isolate themselves when the sit down on the bus.  They adjust their earbuds and the volume on their iPods.  They text friends.  The drop their eyes, or turn their faces to the window, lost in million mile stares.  So sad.  Such wasted opportunities.

Evening on the Rideau

After washing the supper dishes, I carried my bike up from the basement and set out on an evening ride.  I followed a favourite circuit:  riding along the Rideau River to Hogs Back Falls, and then following the canal back home.  The sun had just set when I left, and I rode through a long, fading dusk.

As I rode through the twilight under the trees, I admired the colours of the sky reflecting off the river and bracketing the far, shadowed bank with bands of gold, bronze and turqoise.  Dark clusters of ducks threw long wakes in the swift flowing water.  Red winged blackbirds sang their evening songs in last year's cattails along the shoreline.  At least two great blue herons lifted as I passed and escorted me briefly along my way, before curving backward against the sky to disappear behind me again in the darkness.

I rode quickly, for exercise rather than relaxation -- also to stay warm.  The air cooled quickly once the sun set.  The faintest mist began to gather along the river, and I won't be surprised to see fog in the morning.

I've booked off the week following the Easter weekend, which gives me a full ten days to enjoy the spring weather.  I'll have to take at least one of those mornings for a more leisurely ride along the river.

Ambling

I discovered Edmonton's river valley system when I moved to the City in 1983 from Vancouver.  I remember my amazement to find traces of snow in May, in the cooler, shaded slopes along the south bank.  The ravines arising from the main valley of the North Saskatchewan River seemed to penetrate every part of the City.  I would begin a Saturday stroll or bike ride by descending into the valley from Strathcona and later in the day find myself at the edge of the countryside or emerging into a new district of streets, homes and shops.  I discovered the odd neighborhoods nestled down the valley -- some of the oldest in the City, without running water, still reliant on outhouses.  I found quiet nooks, and hidden urban wild places.

I also re-learned the art of ambling.  Too often I would start my explorations at the hurried pace of weekday life, leaning forward and striking the pavement with each quick, determined step.  I had no place to be, but I would set out as a man with a destination and deadline.  Finally, it would dawn on me that I had neither.  Even then, I could not just slow my pace.  I had to stop, take a deep breath, and reset myself within the world.  And then I could begin again -- not just with slower steps, but with a entire new view of life.  I could appreciate the nuances:  the patterns of things, the gentler sounds, and the taste and smell of the air.

I remembered those walks this week.  Last Thursday, returning in the mid-evening from a meeting:  the night air felt as comfortable as a pair of old runners, and I slouched into a lazy amble, hands in my pockets.  The streets  seemed as familiar and intimate as an old photograph.  I listened to my own footsteps on the pavement.  And then, today, as I left the house for work, I breathed in the perfumed, tropical air that had brought thunderstorms in the night.  I could smell the ocean from five thousand miles away, and I recalled standing awestruck on the shore of the Arabian Gulf, looking out at the place where Man first took to the sea.

Lazarus

I celebrated my inaugural bike ride today, cycling along the trails and parkway to Pink Lake, in Gatineau Park.  With the temperature cradled in the teens, I rode comfortably in a pair of shorts, a tee shirt and a short-sleeved vest.  When I left home, I hadn't yet decided on my destination.  I thought of taking my normal circuit, up to Britannia and then around back through the Experimental Farm.  But as my legs unknotted and the tightness eased out of my chest, I felt the need for hills and trees.

For most of the way, I rode on clear paths and roads.  Once in the park, however, I began to hit patches of snow along the shadier parts of the route, including a couple of stretches just below Pink Lake at least a hundred meters long.  Going up, I had to dismount.  Coming down, I could carefully glide or peddle over the decaying crust.  The exercise routine of the past three months paid off for me, as I felt strong both going up and coming down.

Gatineau Park seemed on the verge of an explosion of life.  Neither the leaves nor spring wildflowers had yet emerged.  But I could sense them swelling -- could almost hear them, somewhere just below the sounds of water running everywhere.  Dripping from ice-rimed rock cuts, running in trickles down mossy slopes, in rivulets converging into streams that ran fast and noisy through ravines and valleys.  I saw little wildlife, except for foraging flocks of songbirds.  Large numbers of bohemian waxwings trilling in the treetops.  Black-capped chickadees buzzing and chittering as they hawked emerging moths and pulled tufts of punky wood and insects from rotten trees.  Even a robin bravely laying claim to his territory, from the top of young spruce in an old field -- whistling his bright song, as only the thrushes can do.

The contrast of the bare, grey tree branches with the sky and landscape always strikes me as particularly beautiful in the spring.  The intricate, fractal patterns of sugar maples and oaks climbing a rocky slope and displaying themselves in silhouette against the sky brings me to a halt in wonder.  The brilliant, feathered green of supercanopy white pines stands out clearly against the grey-black gneiss of the earth and its veneer of stark, decidous bones.

I've often thought of bare tree limbs as bones.  Particularly in the prairies in winter, where they seem to lift pleading hands to the frigid, remorseless blue or starry night.  Their desolation strikes me as both beautiful and frightening.

Coincidentally... or maybe not so... we read Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones in church this morning, followed by John's account of the raising of Lazarus.  Death and resurrection:  spirit and body anew.  The promise of Easter and of spring.  I stood a long time at the Pink Lake lookout, and I felt deeply connected to the landscape about me.  I could feel and see myself only as an extension of the life surrounding me.  Not a apart from it; but a part of it.  And, yet, the only self-aware part of that life.  Somewhere in that reality lies the Holy Trinity.

I like the idea of heaven, but I've never seen the point of it.  We arise as an expression of life, and we return to life in time like a wave subsiding into the ocean.  In the end, I will welcome whatever God has in mind, but I'm not sure that I'd like to rise like Lazarus.  I'd rather give myself up to the earth and the trees, the sky and the stars.

The road less travelled

Sue and I huddled under the covers for a long time this morning, sharing warmth.  We haven't quite figured out the heating in this big, open house.  The kitchen feels as cozy as a pair of wool socks; the adjacent living room chills like a leather ice skate.  Apparently, the ducts in the basement have their own levers and baffles, which send warm air one way or another.  Amidst everything else, we haven't found time to investigate their intricacies.

This evening's sky glowed cerulean, and dangled a delicate crescent moon.  Tonight will be cold again.  The cold, clear nights remind me of the desert.  I've been fortunate to walk under the nighttime desert sky in the UAE and in the Mojave.  The sky in the UAE held a continual haze, which provided ravishing sunsets but sadly muted stars.  The sky in the Mojave, on the other hand, embraced the earth from horizon to horizon with light.

I only managed one night hike in the Mojave.  I set out from my camp below the Kelso Dunes, hiking west along a beaten service road under a waxing moon.  Darkness hid the details of the immediate landscape.  But north and south, the moonlight illuminated the dunes and the Granite Mountains with silver.  With sharp, clean air filling my lungs, I felt disconnected from everything I'd left behind.  Not just my tent and campsite, but the world beyond the horizon, where friends and family held me in their thoughts.

To some extent, I have struggled my whole life with the urge and the need for isolation.  In my first memory, I am standing alone just inside the edge of a forest, looking past a fallen, decaying tree and feeling some call from beyond it.  I have always sought quiet, lonely places.  I still feel that urge nearly every day.  Not an urge to run from something, but lose myself in something else.  I identified very strongly with the young man in "Into the Wild" -- at least as Jon Krakauer presented him.  I am a Contemplative at heart.

But it would be too easy for me to lose myself.  Too selfish.  For me, "the road less travelled" doesn't take me where I'm inclined to go; it takes me where I'd inclined to avoid.  Where's the challenge -- the art of living -- in doing what comes naturally.  For me, the challenge has been to stay, to define a place amidst other people.  To curl up in a warm bed with my wife, rather than follow a moonlit road across the desert.

Spring light

Photographers learn to use the morning and evening light.  Textures show more clearly; colors glow more richly.  Some places have a distinctive light.  I'm told that Key West has long captivated artists.  I've admired the stark winter light of northern Alberta, the gothic light of a coastal rainforest, and the warmth of sunset across an Algonquin Park lake.

This morning's light, as I walked to work, seemed to tease out the nascent spring colors.  The neutral, cream hue of the thin overcast accentuated the tinsels of color in the cityscape.  The rosy buds of the maple trees, just coming into flower.  The hint of paler green effusing the dark winter needles of the spruce trees.  Even the young women, crossing the footbridge toward the university, appeared to glow more beautifully.

By midday, however, a cold wind wrapped itself again around the City.  I shivered on the walk home and didn't notice the colors.

New beginnings

We moved on Friday.  Not far:  within the Co-op, just down the street into an airy, four bedroom house.  Sue now has her bright, open kitchen, with an apple tree outside the window.  The boys have larger rooms.  I'm writing from my new office, overlooking the students and traffic on King Edward.  After seven months of living shoulder to shoulder in a small, two bedroom townhouse, we can now each find our own space and a bit of privacy.  We hope to live here at least until the boys are well into university.  I suspect that we will come to see this move as the real start of our life as a family.

I also turned fifty on Friday.  I don't know, yet, how I feel about that milestone; I haven't had a quiet time to think about it.

And finally, the April showers have arrived.  The weather spared us on Friday, with just a faint sprinkle first thing in the morning, and then a warming day with sunshine in the afternoon.  We enjoyed two glorious, spring days over the weeked.  Sadly, instead of chasing geese and ducks around Bearbrook as I'd hoped, Sue and I spent the days inside, unpacking boxes.  Now, this morning, a steady drizzle falls, and the temperature should reach 14 degrees.  Is that a faint tint of green in the grass across the street?

Once the kinks have eased out of my muscles, and my knees have ceased to ache, I hope to sit back -- maybe out on the porch, with my guitar beside me -- and reflect in a more leisurely way on these new beginnings.