I've been feeling some self-applied pressure to post something about Thanksgiving, as gratitude is a value we try to role model consistently at Jumping Mouse. As the Facebook and blog posts full of concise and lovely expressions of gratitude pitter pattered down over the weekend, accumulating gently like tiny hailstones from an October cloudburst generated by a fast-moving low-pressure weather system, I felt reluctant to join in. And, understandably I think, reluctant to surrender any more of my Thanksgiving hours to my laptop's unblinking gaze. So I took to my sit spot, and the woods, and the meadows, and the gravel pits, and the family suppers of my hometown of Chelsea, Quebec. It's so easy to be spontaneously grateful sometimes. I can hardly even think about migratory birds without shedding a tear of anxious gratitude. Natural cycles have shown incredible resilience despite violent changes to the biosphere. Come to think of it, my experience of gratitude is always held in tension with some sadness. Of course there is a fundamental impermanence in life, but...aren't we all attended to by a frighteningly vast sense of loss? Even in my oldest and dearest sit spot, a reliable prompter of gratitude, I wonder how long it will be until development, pipeline spill, or private property laws will prevent me from visiting it. And how much already has been changed or lost to climate change, altered watersheds, habitat fragmentation, the provincial highway slicing the wetlands, or the absence of wolves, cougars, delicate amphibians. Deep gratitude, paired as it is with grief, is so personal. Hard to do it justice, except in private moments with the landscape of my childhood, and in shared meals, hugs, walks, and fart jokes with my family, for whom I am very grateful. And, as Rachel Carson has famously demonstrated, it is enormously important to witness and account for diversity, even as it is being lost. Thanks landscape, thanks community, thanks family. I'mma love you while I have you. Oh, and one lasting insight from this weekend after being embarrassed by a big shiny raven: taking selfies DESTROYS your awareness. Just FYI.
5 Comments
Susan Riley
10/17/2013 04:01:23 am
I thought I would fill you in on this morning's outdoor adventure here in the Gatineau Hills. Laura and I were run-walking along the Huron Trail through a still-colourful, but pretty unpopulated forest, when we came upon two older women _ I estimated mid-seventies _ peering intently at some fern fronds through a jeweller's glass. They greeted us in English and we fell into a brief conversation. They appeared to know their way around fronds. It won't surprise you to learn they both wore serviceable canvas outwear and one sported a Tilley.
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Laura McNairn
10/17/2013 12:02:25 pm
These moments during our 'run-walks' in the Gatineau Park and in the areas around Chelsea are much more vivid because of renewed attention sparked by our awareness of the small snapshots of the miracles of the natural world around us. I stopped dead in my tracks, well not quite dead, to watch 'Becky the Beaver' wind her way towards me on the edge of the pond, the fur, hair? on her head so perfectly coiffed in the breaking sunlight. Susan and Kali ran back and found me transfixed. This, and taking the jeweler's glass from our elderly field botanist friends to examine the curled buds of a frond, slowed the run-walk into a stretched out series of blessings, not to mention the view from the ramparts! Part of this new awareness is being retired and having time to stop and 'smell the roses'. Part of this new awareness is having a D'Arcy to point out some of these small pleasures of the natural world as we wander old paths and new.
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Susan Riley
10/17/2013 04:12:33 am
Forgot to ask if there is a way to post my pics here. Yours, by the way, are incredibly beautiful!
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Mary Hutton
10/17/2013 05:43:35 am
Gratitude for most wonderful daughters who reflect the beauty around them.
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christine scheurich werkhoven
10/19/2013 11:20:28 am
Thanks to D'Arcy's mom. Awesome contribution you've made to the world. Some serious parenting skills evident here. :) <3
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AuthorHi everyone! I'm a small, energetic mammal. I sometimes go by the name Zapus hudsonicus. Archives
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