“You’ll be my arms, and I’ll be your eyes”

Hi Folks:

If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s well worth watching. We first read about it in an article in the Huffington Post. In China two specially-enabled men, lifelong friends, are changing their world – one tree at a time. When he was three Jia Wenqi lost his arms from a burn resulting from touching a power line. Jia Haixia was born with sight in only one eye, but he was blinded in an industrial accident in 2000. After losing his sight he became despondent. Both men were concerned by the environmental degradation in their area and so they teamed up to start planting trees. With no budget they used only hand tools and planted branches cut from existing trees. In their first year they planted 800 trees; 2 survived. They’ve now planted more than 10,000 trees and hope to cover a mountain.

They deserve our applause, and our support. How can you make your world a little better?

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. A classic tale, also well worth reading, is ‘The Man Who Planted Trees’ by Jean Giono. Originally written in French, it’s also available in English.

P.S. II, the sequel. A story we first heard about in 2012 is a man in India who has planted a forest by himself: The Man Who Made a Forest

The Spirit of Canada

Hi Folks:

Last night Marcia and I were down at ‘The Well’ on Fort Street for the semi-finals of ‘The Spirit of Canada‘ – Poetry, Spoken Word and Singers/Songwriters’ Contest.  Our friend Sheila was reading poetry in the event and has moved on to the finals on August 6!!  All of the poems and songs were to incorporate Canadian culture, politics, landscape and/or humour, and there was some excellent talent there.  Listening to the various performers, however, got me thinking about what it means to be Canadian, and I was reminded of a story shared with Marcia and me some years ago.  I think it captures the essence of Canada in many ways.  I was going to write it out for this post, then remembered that I’d already done so a couple of years ago.  Here once again, then, is ‘Telling Tales‘.

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. If you’re in Victoria on August 6, be sure to come by The Well for the final presentations!

“Years”, by Bartholomäus Traubeck

Hi Folks:

I sent this out to a number of people by e-mail yesterday; thought I’d share it here as well…

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Follow this link and play the video, but listen first, without looking at the video or trying to interpret what you hear:

Years
“Years”

Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month

Hi Folks:  Well, if you promise not to mention that the ‘photo of the month’ post was due yesterday, I’ll pretend not to notice!

At a meeting of our local photography group recently, several people did presentations of images based on a specific theme.  Mine was on ‘faces’.  I should explain that I’m not a people photographer, and people appear in far less than 5% of my work.  I shot a wedding, once, and swore I would never do it again.  However, as a landscape photographer one thing I like to do is to look for ‘faces’ and things in other objects.  Sometimes they’re fairly obvious and sometimes they’re more elusive.  If you go through my Flickr photostream you’ll find a number of such images, but I chose one to highlight as April’s photo of the month.  It’s a piece of driftwood I found along the shore on Dallas Road – nearly an entire tree, in fact, and there are some good size rocks embedded into the roots.  However, looked at from the bottom of the tree the shape forms a fairly good representation of a human skull. Continue Reading →

Telling Tales

Hi Folks:

As a writer and a storyteller, I love stories. Over the centuries stories and songs have fulfilled many roles, from entertainment, education and enlightenment to geography, history, genealogy… even becoming a central core of a People. For example, the People from the Trobriand Islands can sing back nearly 200 generations of their history. I was at a conference years ago and one of the speakers was an elder who spoke about ‘ownership’ of stories, and that it was necessary to have permission from the story’s owner before one could tell them. For my part, I respectfully disagree. Stories must be told, must be shared to be kept alive.

This story remains one of my favourites. It was told to us by a man who approached us after a talk given by Dr. David Suzuki. I trust he won’t mind my sharing it with you, although I must say that I’m writing this out from memory and any errors are mine alone. For the sake of privacy I’ll call the gentleman who shared this story with us just W.

This story happened in northern Ontario, in a town named Cochrane. I’ve been to Cochrane a few times, even did a little work up there. One of its claims to fame is that it’s the southern terminus of the ‘Polar Bear Express‘, a train that runs north up to Moosonee and Moose Factory, near the shores of James Bay. It’s also the home of the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat and Heritage Village.

Anyway, the story begins when W. was a boy growing up in the Cochrane area. Like many other boys he loved nature and spent half his time hanging out on the Reserve or wandering around the woods. When he grew up he went south to university and work, but at the time of this story he was back up in Cochrane acting as liaison on behalf of the local band. Cochrane has a half dozen hotels now, but there was a time there was only one, and he was staying there. One day he looked out the restaurant window and saw a large U-Haul truck, packed to the gills, stuff tied on the roof… ‘Just someone passing through’, he thought. The next morning the truck was still there. At dinner it was still there, and the following morning it was still there. He also came to associate this truck with a woman who was sitting alone in the restaurant. Finally the restaurant manager came over to him and said, “You speak city, go and talk to her.” So he did.

Turned out she was from New York state originally. Her husband had passed away suddenly and she found herself alone. She had a friend who lived out on an island off BC’s coast, and her friend suggested that since there was nothing keeping her in New York, she should pack up and move to BC to be with her friend. Well, she made it as far as Cochrane, but now she was stuck.

Before I go any further with this story I should explain that Cochrane is situated along Hwy 11 in northern Ontario, and the highway on both sides is rimmed by endless miles of black spruce forest. It’s an amazing ecosystem, but to the uninitiated it looks like one mile is the same as the next and the next and… And well, she got to Cochrane and she froze. She couldn’t go forward, and she couldn’t go back. “What would happen if I broke down on the highway?” she asked. “This is northern Ontario” was the reply. “If you break down the first vehicle to come by is going to stop and ask you what you need – food, a place to sleep, a tow truck, blankets, some gas… whatever.” “What if I got attacked?” she asked. “This Is Northern Ontario!” came the warm reply again. “People look out for each other up here.” “And all these people keep coming up and talking to me!” she said next. “This is northern Ontario… ” “Look”, he said. “You see the trees out behind the hotel?” “Yes.” “Okay, this is what I want you to do.” I want you to walk back there, not too far – stay within sight of the hotel – but walk back into the forest a bit, find a place where you feel comfortable, then sit. After you’ve sat there for a while and you’re feeling relaxed, I want you to pick out a tree that you like and I want you to give it a hug. And don’t let go until it hugs you back.”

Well, after giving it a moment’s consideration she got up and left, taking a walk toward the trees behind the hotel. She was gone an hour, two hours, three hours… and W. figured either she was doing okay or she was lost, but either way it would work out alright.

The next morning when he got up there was a hotel envelope slipped under the door of his hotel room. He opened it up and all the note said was, “It hugged me back.” And she was gone.

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Thanks to W. for sharing this story with us! If you drop by here sometime, you can check out the ‘Our Stories‘ section and from time to time I’ll post some of my own experiences.

Love,
Mike.