boys with beer

My cousin Antony (left) was in the Yukon for a few days working, which is super rare because we live 6000km away from everyone, and so we had him over for dinner and a walk (the guys brought roadies as you can see, but our "road" is not much a road). My Sasquatch is being allusive over there on the right as always. He is private like that. He doesn't even have a real facebook with his real name. I really, really would love to blog photos of him to show off how dreamy mansquanches can be once they get cleaned up and civilized. Oh well, there's my cousin. IT's so crazy how much he is starting to look like OPA!


On a side note: On my walk a few days before this, when the dirt from the ground was starting to emerge from beneath the snow, I became emotional, like the dirt was some long lost friend and we were finally being reunited. Seriously, I almost bawled. Being a tree planter, you become quite well acquainted with the earth, and when you see it you want to sink your hands into it. 

post planting poundage

huge slashpile somewhere in alberta 

I'm not one to exercise. I like sports and doing fun activities in nature, but exercising for the sake of exercise or to reduce or to get muscles has never really been my thing.

For a bunch of years in my twenties I spent 4 months of the year running a marathon for 6 days a week. A marathon called tree planting. Ok, yes, when you are planting trees you aren't running (unless you count the few times you run from bears, not recommended, but when the bear is just as scared as you and is running in the opposite direction it is fine). You aren't running, but you are strapping 200-400 saplings to your waist (50 poundsish) and then trudging (all day long) through some drunken logger's massive impression of pick-up-sticks (the term clear cut is insulting to me, that shit ain't clear). 


And while you are maneuvering through this maze of nature, chewed up and spit out for your specific inconvenience, you are expected, every few steps, to slam a shovel into the ground, crack open Canada, bend over and feed her a tree, a few thousand times. 


Let's not forget how you get to this slash laden workplace. You walk. You walk for maybe an hour, maybe more maybe less, with all of your gear, sometimes carrying full bags of trees, always carrying the shit ton of water you need to consume so you don’t die. HeeHaw. And always along some path where trucks don't go, where trucks don't go for a reason, because, before you put one tree into the ground, you are expected to complete some seemingly impossible feat. Something like swimming the English Channel, or tightrope walking across Niagara Falls. Something like crossing a raging river in a dingy, or walking for 7 miles over muskeg, MUSKEG, you know, the kind of mossy watery spongy swampy expanse that probably swallowed all of Dinotopia. 

One plus to tree planting is you are basically being paid to go to fat camp. You start the season soft and you end it hard. You end it athlete hard. The trade off is a few months of hell and some really bad tan lines. 


And another thing, while you are there you can eat as much crap as you want. I'm talking  archipelagos of French fries swimming in seas of cheese and gravy. I’m talking Andes of pasta. Rivers of powdered sugar “juice.” Entire Saskatchewans of bread. If you wake up early enough and your camp cook lets her guard down for mere seconds, you may experience that magic moment where you eat your own weight in bacon.

Because of this I haven’t really had a problem with weight or body image or anything like that for a long time. And if I did, I would just wait a few months and it would be spring again, time to mash a lifetime’s worth of working out (and eating) into a few months.

But I just had a baby. And for the last bit of my pregnancy I was on bed rest. I was a beached whale (ya I said it) kept alive with the splashes of food Squanch brought me and my own faith that one day soon the tide would come high enough to reach me and I would be able to swim once again.

And so now I am feeling a bit soft. The organs that used to be tucked behind my abs are flopping out over my pants. I have a belly reminiscent of a 5 month pregnant person and pre-preggers clothes is not fitting me. The baby is 4 months old. I am not going treeplanting, but I am going to kick life up a notch and renew my teen obsession with cross-country running. My awesome red running shoes are in the mail and as soon as they get here I’m gonna be out the door!

"When the student is ready..."

"...the teacher appears." Buddhist proverb

Late last summer Squanch and I were exploring in our area and we ended up on a nearby mountain slope picking wild cranberries with two strangers, while our dogs intermingled, weaving golden threads in and out of the little pine trees around us. It was one of those encounters that feels like a gift from the universe. These two women were wonderful berry picking companions, and every time I sprinkle those frozen red orbs into my blender for a morning smoothie, I am reminded of the serendipity of that afternoon.

Well, the gifts from the universe keep coming (I sound cliche new-agey when I say stuff like that but oh well, it is the only way I can explain it). Turns out one of those women runs an outdoor learning centre from her home where there is a beautiful building (I describe as a hippie/zen church), that hosts, among other things, yoga classes. And so, by this chance encounter I was enrolled in the best yoga classes I could possibly imagine!

The teacher blends her incredible knowledge with an uncanny intuitiveness. She takes time to explain things, allows us to experience the poses how it feels best to us and guides us gently with her calm wisdom. By the time class ends there is a sense of balance to my energy, I feel as if I have exercised and had a massage at the same time. 

The atmosphere of this hippie-zen-hall is perfect for yoga. We do mountain pose in front of a wall of windows overlooking a mountain range. A wood-stove crackles in the corner while we lay down on our mats for our final relaxation pose.

I must remind myself, as socially anxious as I am, such gifts often come from outside my comfort zone. We approached those women in late summer, on the side of a mountain, and struck up a conversation, and after a long dark winter, I am still benefitting from the harvest of this encounter.

front yard

I'd prefer ocean front. Atlantic ocean, to be specific. But this will do for now. I guess.

keep baby safe

Mornings at home are easy. Sundrenched and slow. I sip coffee and listen to the radio. Juniper is happy to play, feed, then fall asleep for a few hours.

It’s the afternoons away from home when it hits me. Lethargy. Weight. A hollow fullness of the gut. Senseless anxiety resulting in a fatigue so strong it’s as if my body is moving through syrup and not air. There is something wrong deep inside my abdomen. Yesterday, out shopping in town, bent over my cart, I become disoriented in the store. Dizzy with the danger of all the strangers around me. Every single one of them is a bit off. My body stiffens when I pass them, they all have arms to reach out and touch the baby, to grab the baby, harm the baby. What am I there for? Wandering around on the border of panic, feeling as if I may fall over. Rational thought tells me I’m ok, I will not pass out, but rational thought is such a pushover, extremely susceptible to the convincing powers of anxiety.

I pull through. Always do. Go to the library. The new one with the stairs. Somehow I make it up them, grab the book, walk back down. It takes all my power to let the sight of the railing pass through me as I ascend and descend, to ignore the scary drop to the hard tiled floor. How does one ignore gravity? Of course, more attention is paid to something being actively ignored, and in so ignoring, quite the opposite effect is attained. The muscles clench, the bowels tie themselves in knots, in tatters, in muddy mats like a messy head of hippie hair. My innards. Dreadlocks. Locked with dread.

This is how it is. My role as mother. Walk around in constant computation of danger to baby. And, everything means danger. Worse, every possible horrific outcome, I witness inside my mind. I am in a constant state of trauma, grief, agony over everything that could possibly happen, because somehow my brain can’t tell that these images are simply meant as warnings, are not actually happening.

a mommy blog moment

She is sleeping. Thank you Royal Wood. Thank you coffee. Thank you sunshine. I have a rare, alert, calm, cozy, beautiful moment to myself.

don't look down

Squanch took this a few weeks ago. Happens often. No Big Deal.

So it's nighttime in the woods right now and while sitting reading, sleeping baby in my arms, it suddenly occurred to me I was going to have to, ahem,  poot.


Usually, I do it during the day. How could I possibly schedule such an event? You would too if you had an outhouse. Believe me, it's a terrifying event to use the shitter at night. The dark is scary enough as it is, but add the odd nearby coyote sighting, or midnight howl fest (feast?), and it becomes terrifying.


Squanch is especially good in that he will often lead me out into the darkness and wait outside the outhouse, contemplating his old life as a mythological creature. Bigfoot not afraid. 


Of course Squanch is sleeping at this moment, and so my chaperon this time is the dog, the wimp who was freaking out at the meer presence of tin foil earlier today.


I maneuver the baby into her crib, shove on my big boots, put on a head lamp and run about 100 feet into the woods.


That's when it happens. Something more terrifying than coyotes. I shine the light into the hole.


Think of everything you have flushed in 6 months. Now imagine peering into a pit of everything you have flushed in 6 months.

Ya. Living a running water free life is not for everyone. It may seem idyllic, and it is for me. That is until I forget a very simple rule: DON'T LOOK DOWN!