Sitting in a Caribou coffee shop in a nondescript sprawl of outlet malls and suburban detritus somewhere northwest of the Twin Cities.
We begin two days of work tomorrow with a cohort of community health coalitions working to improve child health around the state. It is the second residential retreat in a centre in the banks if the Mississippi and it will be great. But noticing in this moment a tired longing for spring at home.
Back at home on Bowen Island after a few days away with the family. It is rainy here today and the fog is draped on the snow capped mountains and ridges. Our coast has been pounded by a late blast of winter wind and rain and snow and now the sky wears its blue and grey colours like a bruise.
When I am here at home these days there are rhythms and patterns I like to indulge in. One of them is mornings spent here at The Snug with a cup of fine espresso and the ins and outs of neighbors and friends dropping in. These are social practices of being at home, being in community, being in relationship. I have learned a lot about humans over these small cups of invitation.
Location:The Snug, Bowen Island,Canada
Sometimes the best map will not guide you,
You can’t see what’s round the bend.
Sometimes the road leads though dark places,
Sometimes the darkness is your friend.
— Bruce Cockburn, Pacing The Cage
This is part of the boardwalk along the Nuu-Chah-Nulth trail in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve near Tofino. The trail winds in and out of shadowy and windswept Sitka spruce and shorepine. All along you are within earshot of the roaring white noise of the breakers rolling in off the North Pacific. Every time the trail ducks into the forest a cathedral of space opens up, and when it emerges again into bog, one feels enclosed by the surrounding forest and walls of salmonberries, salal and Nootka rose. To walk the trail as a meditation is to breath between these two paradoxes.
Sometimes the darkness has more openness than the light.
Days like this, feeling the wind and rain in waves off the Pacific slow me down to see what wants to come through. Things slowly revealed like the importance of the interior life to a world in which we can know everything about someone except what it is like to be them. And reflecting on the poverty of intimacy that brings to spaces in which we need to be with one another deeply – spaces I citizenship contribution and creativity. Spaces of friendship and alliance. Spaces of coming and going.
Location:Tofino,Canada
Ensconced in a cabin near Tofino for a couple of days with the family. It is a day of short cycles, waves coming and going, squalls of snow alternating with sunny spells, sleeping and walking, warm and cold.
All good rest