I'm nearly on my way out of Ontario for a while! Really, I've been in and out of Ontario for a chunk of time now. I've had a seriously good summer, filled with adventures and reflection.
Here are some highlights from late July-now (see previous post for my adventures on the east coast in May and June!): Pelee island stone B&B's and wineries with my Mom and Aunt - sunsets and starlight strong. Blue Skies Music Festival with the ukulele orchestra, good music, good fun, good food, good friends. Wild Woman's Canoe Weekend at Lac Vert in Quebec - a beautiful, hilarious, silly, naked, weekend - sheeez I love those Ottawa women. Lake Champlain Region on bicycle with my dear old Otesha friend Lucy. What a joy, what an adventure, loved Burlington, Vermont, twas a beauty! People's Social Forum in Ottawa saw environmentalists and activists gathering from all around this country of ours to build community and share ideas...I learned about power and privilege, heard First Nation stories, experienced my own sense of place, and heard about mining in Central America. I went on my first whitewater Canoe trip on the Mattawa River. A great way to celebrate a dear friend's birthday. These events were all surrounded by in between moments of spending time with the Ottawa community I love - ecstatic dancing, playing in the park with magic, cooking up summer's bounty, harvest pop up picnics, and my share of roller coaster reflection, emotion, relationship cycles as I processed the challenges of being without a homespace and the sense of ungrounded-ness I felt without house, job, committed relationship. Was all part of a complete summer cycle!
Then came perhaps the biggest highlight of summer - the month I spent at my friends farm in Wakefield. Ferme et Forêt is the socially and environmentally conscious home and business enterprise of Genevieve Legal-Leblanc and Sean Butler. Check out their website for more details (and to learn about their Maple Syrup share program!) about how awesome sauce they are. I had a blast learning about and harvesting wild edibles (day lilies, elderberries, plums, apples, milkweed, woodsorrel etc!), harvesting in the vegetable patch, getting shitake mushroom logs ready and inoculated, walking maple syrup lines...my tent was my cozy home, my bike my transportation into Ottawa on the weekends to be with friends there. Food! Jeez, I love everything about it.
And in rolled October. I had a time in Toronto, visiting old places and people from a time that feels like a looooooong time ago...I lived there from late 2009-2011, and it's amazing how much I've moved on from that place in a lot of ways, it felt very certain that I was a visitor - a visitor that doesn't desire to live there again...It was fantastic to reconnect with so many bosom buddies there, and I came out of my week there loving the dose of vibrancy that Toronto always grants me (yummy restaurants, green spaces well used, Nuit Blanche, funky home spaces, nifty neighbourhoods, bike-ability albeit with risk, interesting in so many ways...) but really ready to leave. Leave the city, not the people.
Onwards I flow! I'm excited about how things are panning out. I found a woman online that I will drive across the Northern US with to Fernie, BC. I'll take a Wilderness First Responder Course, and then head back to the west Kootenays, where I'll connect with old friends, and visit the ashram I spent some time at in 2012 for a few weeks. Then, my journey south to warmth will begin! Hi hooooo sunshine instead of snow here I come!
Please please please, keep in touch; energetically, through written words, through voice, through prayers...however feels right for you, please keep in touch. I feel excited for new journeys, but I really love so many people in Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto, Kitchener, Nelson, Vancouver, Victoria, Sydney... While my community is spread, across Canada and beyond, I will hold you all close in my heart.
I was listening to a song yesterday, and it really resonated with me. It was by Whitely and the lyric that stuck out to me was:
"my heart is not a machine. It beats in time with all the others that I love"
I'm beating in time with you!
