Elements

the view from my bench

One of the many magical things I’ve discovered about Esquimalt is the wilder side of Victoria’s Inner Harbour – this lovely little part of the Capital Regional District features a coastline of tiny mountaintops poking up through the ocean, gusty winds at unexpected intervals, and an up-hill/down-dale topography that provides a better workout than anything I could probably get in a gym. And the same stunning view of the Olympic mountains is as readily available here as it was from the Ocean Room.

A recent flânerie took me, with my Canon, down to Saxe Point Park, the “over the bridge” version of Beacon Hill that features far fewer flower beds and a slightly less cultivated atmosphere than my former stomping ground. I walked the park’s perimeter with the ocean on my right and the urban forest on my left, until I rounded the point and came upon a wooden bench situated with a rock rise at its back and a stunning view of the water out front. By then a rest was welcome, so I sat down on the bench and took a minute to absorb the environment. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath in, let it out, and noted:

The sun’s warmth on my face;

The air stirring in my lungs;

The rock solid beneath my feet;

The sound of water gently lapping the shore.

In short, it was a perfectly pure mindful moment in which I was acutely aware of the four main elements that makes this world so beautiful. Wood and metal were also present in the bench beneath me, but this Virgo counts them with rock in the “earth” category.

This dimension is fraught with contrast. Life is not designed to be easy, but our loving, friendly and generous Universe has provided a glorious venue in which to find respite from the human experience. All we have to do is pay attention to it, and to ourselves. We are connected to the earth in ways we don’t fully comprehend, yet that moment on the bench at Saxe Point defined my connection more keenly than any book or documentary ever could.

It must have done, because I’ve remembered it.

Whole Lotta Shakin’

For the uninitiated, coastal BC sits in an earthquake zone. A couple of continental plates are jammed one atop the other and one day a shift is going to occur that will make Abbostford a waterfront city. We’re located on the east side of the Pacific “Rim of Fire”, a volcanic and geologically unstable circle that may be likened to a sleeping dragon: we move with the rhythm of its breathing, but we get a jolt when it coughs.

Gods help us when it wakes.

I’d still rather live here than in the prairies, where tornadoes have an annual season, or the tropics, where hurricanes/monsoons/cyclones are equally predictable. I know enough about quakes to have the infrequent, “OMG, we’re gonna die!” freak out, but such thoughts don’t stick around. If they did, I’d have relocated years ago.

I’m good with the occasional tremor.

In truth, they happen every day. We just don’t feel most of them. I’ve convinced myself that every little shaker is releasing the pressure on the subducted plates and thus delaying or reducing the oomph of the inevitable Big One, but no one knows for sure if this is so. We won’t know until it happens.

I will confess, however, that the 4.3 or 4.9, depending on who you talk to,  event that shook me awake on December 29 lasted longer than was comfortable. Just as I thought it was over, the shaking resumed with a little more vigour. “This is it,” I thought (the first time I have ever thought that), and in the next instant … nothing.

My heart took longer to quit pounding than the quake itself lasted, but time assumes a disconcerting elastic quality when Nature is in charge. Compared to others felt over the years, this one was impressive.

They are usually over before they can be identified. I once thought the photocopier was due for servicing, but an earthquake had rattled through the print run.

While prepping for work one morning years ago, the bathroom floor lurched beneath my feet. “Ter!” I yelled, continuing to apply my eye makeup, “was that a quake?”

“I think so!” she called from the other end of the house. End of conversation.

Another time, also at Rockland, I was in the tub when a large truck rumbled past the house. Ter poked her head into the bathroom to advise me otherwise. I glanced at the painting on the wall above me and thought perhaps we should move it elsewhere.

There are no paintings on the bedroom walls, just in case.

10:30 p.m. on Boxing Day 2012—I recall the specifics because the house cracked and trembled as the train roared through the basement and I thought, “No! Not during the Game of Thrones marathon!”

The Northridge, California quake in 1994 was memorable not for being felt in BC, but for the six weeks that followed, during which the office I was with answered countless calls from the public, varying from practical requests for info on what to put in an earthquake kit to panicked pleas for advice on what to do when a shaker hits. One caller was ready to pack up and return to Ontario, but my “the earth is breathing and sometimes it coughs” explanation relaxed her enough to reconsider.

“It’s not to be feared,” I said, “just prepare as best you can.”

I wonder sometimes if I was given the same advice about life before I was born.

Burning the Ground

The world is on fire. The entire west coast is burning so hot that the sky over Victoria is thick and jaundiced with smoke. You can almost smell it. The photo I took on the weekend looks like it was tinted sepia. It wasn’t.

It’s unsettling, the colour of chaos. BC is burning in some areas, flash-flooding in others. If only we could direct the water toward the fire sites, one might find some divine providence in it all. This early in the season and the wildfire budget (how the heck can you budget for disaster?) is already exhausted. The fire crews on the ground and finance folks waiting to pay the bills are or will soon be equally so.

The glorious spring we enjoyed has morphed into the summer from hell. Drought conditions create rock-hard soil so when the rainstorms come, the water bounces off the ground and rushes straight through people’s basements. Intense dry lightning sparks new forest fires almost daily. Rising night winds whip the flames to the point where they create their own wind and start crowning—that’s jumping from treetop to treetop, folks—and the dry brush underfoot, the wreckage from pine beetle infestation and heedless foresting practices, ignites to meet in the middle.

It’s not just in BC, either. If the prairies aren’t battling tornadoes and thunderheads with hail the size of golf balls, they’re on fire too. Fire crews in the US are fighting as hard as ours to hold off hungry flames with yummy homes and vacation cottages in their sights. Hundreds—thousands?—of people are evacuated with a half-hour’s notice and nothing but what they can stuff into their cars. Lives may not be lost, but they could be irrevocably changed.

I heard that a little earthquake recently rattled Nova Scotia (?!) I’m sitting in a subduction zone where, when that one plate shifts, Abbotsford will become waterfront property, and I’m getting a little nervous. “Mother Earth is waking up,” Ter said the other day, “and she is pissed.”

Her comment got me thinking. If Mother Earth had been Father Earth instead, would we have treated her with more respect?

Mother Nature is a Libra

Ter and I recently caught a cool documentary called “Orbit” – about the Earth’s annual journey around the sun and how three things affect our planet: the orbit itself, the rotation of the Earth on its axis, and the tilt of the Earth on its axis. I paid more attention in Grade 10 science than I thought, because I actually understood what the presenters were saying about how the weather works, how (and why) the seasons occur, and all manner of other nifty-neater tidbits that I’ve filed away to wow people at social occasions down the road.

The episode about the tilt was the most fascinating because it focused on extreme weather phenomena like tornadoes and monsoons, explaining how and why they happen. There is so much going on to keep the world balanced while we merrily blaze along unbalancing everything. I’m not so hip on the Book of Genesis these days, but I do appreciate the intricate design and mechanics of our world within its galaxy within the greater universe. It’s miraculous no matter who/what you think is in charge of it all, and we are indeed arrogant little gnats to think so much of our combined intellect and expertise. Yeah. Right. The planet is smarter than we are. It’s trying, always trying, to compensate for our intelligence. It’s all about balancing the positive and negative energies that sustain us and we haven’t got a frigging clue. We don’t.

My vocabulary is too small to express my awe at how precarious is our position in space. Down to the tiniest molecule, nature seeks to keep the physical scales aligned and thus keep the world habitable. Actually, the same thing is happening within our own bodies, but we’ve been deafened to the innate wisdom that can tell us what we require to be healthy. There is a movement toward healing through balancing internal energies—or is it a return to those methods? because holistic therapies have been around for millennia compared to the relatively recent forms of “conventional” medicine. It makes you wonder which is actually the alternative in the field.

Admittedly, I’m no expert and I’m not dependent on my intelligence, but I am learning to ride the rhythm of the world both outside and within myself. I’ve known for a while that the planet is ill because we’re robbing it of the resources it needs to stay healthy, therefore its attempts to regain that critical balance are becoming more violent. I’m trying to apply the same principle to my own carbon-based unit, else I’d still be eating sandwiches and sticky buns. Some days are better than others, but I am practicing awareness of myself and my environment. Earth is a marvelous, magical place. Doesn’t it make sense to keep it that way?

Beautiful!