The wind comes to worry the earth. Rising up off the lake it crests the clay cliffs and juggernauts into the lea. Hedges and fences are painted with windblown grocery bags, candy wrappers and muddy coffee cups. The fields are strewn with stripped bark, broken branches and fallen nests. The newly greened land is bisected by a grey curtain of rain that rides the wave. It crests to break in hard bullets striking the ground punctuating the rolling surge with a staccato rhythm. The wind climaxes and with a sharp crack the old apple tree splits in two. A snow of apple blossoms rises up and is carried away in the maelstrom. Between the lips of shredded bark the white flesh of the broken trunk glistens pale in the rain under the grey black sky.

The smell of fermenting apple, cloying and sharp, rises from the ruin. Dying from the inside out carpenter ants have softened the heart of the tree leaving a honey tinted pulp, an intricate and muddied labyrinth of passages. Limb by limb the chain saw rives the fallen giant. All the while the wind howls, sweeping in great circles; a wolf rounding the slaughter yard. The growl of the chainsaw blends with its bay.

Night falls and so does the wind, sulking in the dark…waiting. The crescent moon rides the murky swell as it passes and we spin through the firmament. In the still early hours of morning, hidden from the glaring light of day, the bowers burning are graced even now with crumpled brown apple blossoms breathing out the delicate fragrance of a spring aborted. Acrid smoke rises up into the sky. The stench of seared green leaves cling in bitter and stinking brown. The moon fades from warm gold to a stain of clotted blood only to be swallowed by the black heralding the dawn chorus.

The Guelder Rose is green now in the final month of summer. The wind has swept up the blossoms and scattered them away like delicate flakes of summer snow. There beneath the Guelder's green boughs, a small form lays quiet and still. Sodden and dark from the morning rain, the first hint of colour is muddied on the breast. The head reclines, one eye hidden, the other open to the sky. The gelid orb has frosted over a pale imitation of a ripening blueberry and a sudden glint of movement creates a startling illusion of life. Closer inspection reveals an ant making its way along the edge of the convex curve of that soft jewel.

The wind rustles the trees mimicking the patter of rain as the leaves brush against each other in the dark. The moonlight spreads across the night sky rippling the dark like sunlight on water. It leaks through the depths to find the hidden world below. The clouds are islands floating free overhead, the bottoms dark and the tops awash in platinum halos.

The rain and the insects have done their work, emptying out the fallen. The blueberry frost has been replaced by the vacuum of a blank socket stark against the white of bone. The delicate spine articulates a gentle curve of ivory jewels cradled in the soft bower of discarded feathers.

The terns glide across the surface and then hang over the water watching the waves below. Hurtling down they disappear beneath the green and then rise up, orange beaks full of flashing opalescent scales. A rust and green length of dead carp kisses the shore. The round hollow above the gill fills with the wash and weeps Erie's tears as clasped in her bosom it gently rocks to an eternal sleep. Scatterings of diamond fossils, frozen in stone, line the path between here and there.

The waves hurry on towards the shore, cresting above the plane animating the grey expanse. Breaking on the rim, they breathe, expand and begin anew. Sinking into the sand, flowing back into the rhythm, forward under the cliff side and up into the air they change yet remain the same.

     The Canadian government has declared 2005 the Year of The Veteran. All year long from coast to coast and continent to continent the Canadian people have commemorated the contributions and the sacrifices of those heroes who fought in the name of freedom. This is a special year to officially recognize all our veterans young and old who fought for peace and still fight to maintain it. The ceremonies and remembrances are as diverse as the people that make up this large country.

     Aboriginal veterans’ organizations and the Assembly of First Nations have undertaken a spiritual journey to European shores to honour the sacrifices made by Canada's First Nations, Inuit and Métis warriors. At each place of resting they performed the Calling Home Ceremony and on their return home they will continue the spiritual ceremonies to receive the spirits of fallen warriors who answered the song of the pipes.

     Work continues on the restoration of deteriorating war monuments in France and Belgium. The monument commemorating the loss of more than 11,000 WWI soldiers at Vimy Ridge is currently being restored brick by brick in an effort the workers call “a labour of love”.

     The Canadian mint has released commemorative and circulation coins in honour of all those who serve. The design depicts two profiles, one young and one old, to honour not just the veterans of WWI, WWII and the Korean War but also those who have served in places like Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia, fostering peace and freedom on behalf of Canada.

     Veterans’ organizations are searching out the resting places of those who served their country to place commemorative maple leafs on their stones. Canadians have sailed and feted, skated and danced all in celebration and remembrance of those who have graced this land with their bravery and their sacrifice. Plaques have been unveiled and wreaths have been laid. Newspapers daily recount the heroics and tragedies of the local boys gone off to war, those who returned and those who did not.

    

     On the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month we remember Canadians who served in the name of freedom. We remember the 600,000 Canadian soldiers who volunteered to serve overseas during the First World War (1914-1918). We remember the more than one million men and women from Canada who served during the Second World War (1939-1945). We remember the over 26,000 Canadians who served in Korea (1950-1953). And though it is much debated and not often mentioned we remember the over 30,000 Canadians who chose to cross the border and fight in the jungles of Vietnam.

    

     In my household on November 11^th we pay special homage to the late John “Jack” Flynn. Affectionately known as “Pop”, Jack was my husband’s grandfather. Born in Britain, Jack and his wife Lil would immigrate to Canada with their 3 daughters on one of the last ocean liners to make that regular trip. Jack’s older brother served in the First World War and, despite his brother’s advice, Jack enlisted to serve in the Second World War.

     He didn’t often speak about his war experiences, he did not see war as something to glorify. When the movie “Saving Private Ryan” debuted he was asked if he intended to see it. His answer was a firm no…He had seen enough of the real thing, why would he want to see a movie about it? Jack was there the day after they bombed Dresden. He said it had been leveled to such an extent that one would be hard pressed to know that just the day before there had been a city there. He spoke about the air raids and families hiding in the Underground. One of the saddest stories he remembered was the mother who had gone back to her house for her baby’s bottle never to be seen alive again.

     Jack was one of the gentlest people I’d ever met. He carried his scars from that experience close but he enjoyed life to its fullest. When he left this world in his 88^th year he headed home to the arms of his wife Lil, who had gone ahead several years before. He was a great man and the freedom that he fought for is a gift and a monumental legacy to be shared by not just his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren but the entire world.

 

 

We Remember...

 

 

 

 

In Flanders Fields

 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

 

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

 

- John McCrae

    

The Long Way Home

 

     There's a road that can be forgotten in the rush of the daily minutia that makes up the ticking seconds of a life. There are things that have to be done to feed the big machine. There are things that have to be done to make sure the gears keep turning. The machine is important. Bills don't get paid and bellies don't get filled if the machine isn't given its due. Sometimes it's hard to remember that the machine is just a tool meant to accomplish a very basic task. Too much attention paid to the metal giant and the machine starts to take on a life of its own. Worship overlong at the altar and the machine becomes a god and a petty and jealous one at that. In the end it will require you to sacrifice everything in the name of its cause. Like some old myth come to life it will fill the sky and the land around until everything is the machine and the machine is everything.

    Inertia is an interesting concept. Newton’s law of inertia states, in a nutshell, that it is the natural tendency of objects to resist changes in their state of motion until some other force acts upon them. The machine loves inertia. Inertia keeps the machine fed and oiled. The doctrines of the Church of the Machine forbid its disciples to enact an opposing force to that inertia. The machine desires to keep all purposes at one with its need to survive and dominate.

     Feed the machine. It is a necessary evil. But you must decide when and what it will eat. Embrace change. Bend it to your time and your purpose. The machine is powerful. It will fight you but never forget that it is only a means to an end and not the end itself. There are many ways to get to where we're all going but in the end all roads lead to Rome. So if you'd like to, take the long way home. 

What terrible poignancy that we are born with the spark of our own demise contained within us. All that our lives will be, the span that is allotted to each and every one of us, is held within that blueprint of our design. If we are lucky enough the roadmap will direct us to the second half of our crescent moon; that which rounds us out and makes us whole.

The metamorphosis is an uneasy and sometimes painful transformation but all growth requires sacrifice and pain.  The entirety of being, two divided yet one, reflects the light of love in the clearest of icy rays in homage to the creator’s brilliant radiance. The waxing and waning of the night’s face echoes the ebb and flow of our tides. There must be dark so that we may know the light. The constant is contained within the inconstant and nothing is given but the unknown epilogue.

 

     The earth rises up in smooth grass covered mounds. Concentric circles, one within the other, mark the edge of a settlement. The outer rim was built first. Trees cut from the surrounding forest were bolstered with the blood of the earth to strengthen the guardian arms of the village. The second followed at some indeterminate time, a twin embrace identical in height and appearance. Dual breaks mark the path of a stream that danced through this place, waters now 400 years barren and dry. The bright sun of an October day shines down upon a world that was abandoned before the trees that now grace this land were even thought of. This was once a dwelling place of the Attiwandaronk.

     The sky that spreads out above this modern day earth also sheltered the longhouses and fields of a people lost to sorrow and time. The beauty of the day gives lie to the history of the land. Little remains of the Attiwandaronk who worked this land and lived out their lives in these verdant fields. The Attiwandaronks and the Aztecs breathed the same air. While stone eulogizes the life of the later only mounds of earth and the detritus of daily life recorded in shards of pottery, flint and bone remembers the faces of this northern tribe.

     The russets of autumn stains the bowering leaves above and below. A hand's breadth over a decade marks the stain of a life left broken and empty upon the hidden swell of sweet green grass.  The elders gathered in this ancient place to heal what they could. A blessing and the hope for rest were sought but no concrete closure could be gained by way of The Releasing of The spirit ceremony. Does she linger here still, her life leeched into the flesh, the bones, and the blood of this place? Hope demands that she rides the wind, free at last from the demons that shadowed every second, every hour, every day of her earthly time.

     The land of the Attiwandaronk Nation once stretched from Kent County to the Niagara Peninsula. History records this tribe as the first permanent residents and farmers. The Iroquois would end the long reign of this mighty nation. What they did not destroy they assimilated or scattered into the wind.

     Refusing to yield the full tale of its journey the mute earth lays in terrible beauty quiescent beneath an autumnal sky. The ageless wind teases a distant whisper barely discernable as it intertwines within the rustle of leaves. The mysteries of time are here for all to see but the knowledge is coded in an unknown language with no Rosetta stone to provide the key.